What To Do When You're Stopped By Police - The ACLU & Elon James White
What To Do When You're Stopped By Police - The ACLU & Elon James White
Know Anyone Who Thinks Racial Profiling Is Exaggerated? Watch This, And Tell Me When Your Jaw Drops.
This video clearly demonstrates how racist America is as a country and how far we have to go to become a country that is civilized and actually values equal justice. We must not rest until this goal is achieved. I do not want my great grandchildren to live in a country like we have today. I wish for them to live in a country where differences of race and culture are not ignored but valued as a part of what makes America great.
“Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s disdain for restrictive rules of engagement, aimed at minimizing civilian casualties, is under scrutiny following a U.S. missile strike that destroyed an Iranian elementary school, killing 175 civilians. The strike, intended for a nearby military base, relied on outdated intelligence, raising questions about the Pentagon’s targeting standards and the potential impact of Hegseth’s rhetoric on military culture. Critics argue that minimizing civilian harm is not only a moral imperative but also crucial for strategic success and maintaining international support.
The defense secretary has disparaged restrictive rules for opening fire that are aimed at reducing the risk of mistakes and civilian casualties.
“The dumb, politically correct wars of the past were the opposite of what we’re doing here,” Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said last week.Kenny Holston/The New York Times
Charlie Savage has written about national security and legal policy for more than two decades. He reported from Washington.
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has made contempt for what he calls “stupid rules of engagement” — limits meant to reduce risks to civilians — central to his political identity, and has boasted that he unleashed the military to use “maximum authorities on the battlefield” in the Iran war.
“Our warfighters have maximum authorities granted personally by the president and yours truly,” Mr. Hegseth said at a briefing four days after the war started. “Our rules of engagement are bold, precise and designed to unleash American power, not shackle it.”
This and similar statements are now the backdrop to a body of evidence that the destruction of an Iranian elementary school during the opening hours of the war was likely caused by an American missile strike. The preliminary finding of an ongoing military investigation has determined that the United States was responsible, The New York Times has reported.
Long before this war, Mr. Hegseth’s opposition to stricter versions of limits on what U.S. forces need to see and know about a potential target before they may open fire drew criticism. Retired commanders argue that the point of such constraints is not just law, morality and honor, but strategic self-interest. Mistakes that kill civilians stoke anti-Americanism — alienating allies, creating new enemies and making wars harder to win.
“You don’t want to turn the entire population against the United States,” said Mark Hertling, a retired three-star Army general. “If you are bombing indiscriminately — like may have happened on several occasions, to include the girls’ school — that would negate any opportunity to have a positive regime change.”
Pressed about the incident as the details have gradually come to light, Mr. Hegseth has repeatedlyresponded by saying the matter is under investigation and stressing that the United States does not target civilians.
“We’re certainly investigating,” Mr. Hegseth said on Saturday, for example, standing behind President Trump on Air Force One. “But the only — the only side that targets civilians is Iran.”
But the issue is not targeting civilians — such as a situation in which an armed force deliberately attacks a civilian building knowing full well what it is, because it wants and intends to kill civilians.
If the United States attacked the building under the mistaken belief that it was a military facility, the issue is instead how strict or lax the rules of engagement in Mr. Hegseth’s Pentagon were for identifying and verifying the nature of a potential target.
What standards of certainty were imposed on planners for the strikes for vetting and validating potential targets? Does Mr. Hegseth’s repeated statement that he gave the military “maximum authority on the battlefield,” compared with the practice in past wars, mean the standards were formally lowered? Whatever the rules were on paper, did such comments contribute to a culture of moving faster and with less care — of “no hesitation,” in his words — among the planners, resulting in negligence or recklessness?
The school was next door to an Iranian military base full of buildings that were destroyed by precision missile strikes. The school building was once part of that base, before it was fenced off between 2013 and 2016 and converted to civilian use. Officials familiar with the preliminary findings of the official investigation said the strike relied on outdated intelligence and questions remained about why it had not been double checked.
The Pentagon press office declined to comment, saying only that “the incident is under investigation.” It also declined to say who is conducting the investigation.
Usually, the Navy would perform an after-action review of strikes involving Tomahawks fired from a naval vessel, which would ultimately go to Mr. Hegseth for review and approval.
In theory, the Pentagon’s inspector general could conduct a more independent inquiry. But Mr. Trump last year fired the experienced watchdog there, and recently installed as a replacement a former political appointee from his first administration with no prior experience doing inspector general work, Platte B. Moring III.
Last month, Mr. Moring froze a staff proposal to evaluate targeting practices and procedures in the military attacks on boats the administration says are suspected of smuggling drugs, saying he wanted to consult department leadership. He also told staff that it sounded like such a project could be highly political, according to a person briefed on the matter, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss internal deliberations.
His office noted it has not publicly announced any projects related to the Iran war operation and declined to comment on the status of the boat strike matter.
Challenging guardrails
“War is hell,” as Mr. Hegseth frequently points out. But traditionally, American military leadership has expressed concern about the risk of civilian casualties. Especially during the counterinsurgency efforts of the Afghanistan and Iraq wars, when U.S. and allied commanders realized that winning local cooperation was key, they imposed rules of engagement that the military considered to be more restrictive than the minimum guardrails required by the laws of war.
The Pentagon’s own law-of-war manual states that the military, in planning and conducting attacks, must “in good faith based on the information available at the time, take feasible precautions to verify that the person or object is a military objective.” It also notes that “policymakers may choose to apply heightened standards of identification, greater than those required by the law of war, to reduce the risk of incidental harm in conducting an attack.”
Mr. Hegseth thinks differently. He has tried to reshape Pentagon culture, reveling in lethality with “no apologies, no hesitation.” He has portrayed this approach as a “warrior ethos,” one that is tough and manly.
He came up as an Army infantry officer and, as he wrote in his 2024 memoir “The War on Warriors,” loathed strict rules of engagement imposed to minimize risk to civilians, seeing heightened standards for when his platoon could open fire as putting soldiers at greater risk on the battlefield. He blamed judge advocate general lawyers, or JAGs, for such rules — even though it is commanders, not lawyers, who issue them.
For the first few days of the war in Iran, when details about the school strike were murky, Mr. Hegseth boasted at briefings about how he had dialed the rules of engagement down to a minimum.
Unlike traditional American allies “who wring their hands and clutch their pearls, hemming and hawing about the use of force,” he said on March 2, the United States was using force on its own terms “with maximum authorities — no stupid rules of engagement.”
On March 5, he said that “the dumb, politically correct wars of the past were the opposite of what we’re doing here” because they were fought “with restrictive, minimalist rules of engagement,” but in this one, engagement authorities were “maxed out.”
But as more facts have emerged about the school, Mr. Hegseth has softened his tone. At a press briefing on Tuesday, while he still described the mission as “maximum authority,” he did not specifically mention more permissive rules of engagement. Instead, he emphasized and praised precautions to protect civilians.
“Seeing it from the inside every single day, including this, no nation takes more precautions to ensure there’s never targeting of civilians than the United States of America,” he said, adding: “No nation in the history of warfare has ever attempted in every way possible to avoid civilian casualties. And frankly, that’s a point that just isn’t appreciated enough.”
Charlie Savage writes about national security and legal policy for The Times.“
“Iran released photos of missile fragments from a deadly strike on a school, claiming they were from a U.S.-made Tomahawk missile. The New York Times analyzed the photos and identified components consistent with a Tomahawk, including a steering mechanism and a satellite antenna. While the source of the fragments is unclear, the evidence suggests a U.S. strike, contradicting President Trump’s claim that Iran was responsible.
Iranian state media posted mangled remnants it claims were from the Feb. 28 attack in Minab. An analysis shows they have the markings of a missile made by American manufacturers
A government handout photograph showed weapon remnants displayed on a table near the ruins of the Shajarah Tayyebeh elementary school, where a precision strike reportedly killed 175 people, mostly children, on Feb. 28. The remnants have been identified by The Times as components of a modern, U.S.-made Tomahawk missile.IRIB, via Telegram
Mangled missile fragments purporting to be from the deadly strikes that hit a naval base and elementary school in southern Iran on Feb. 28 bear the markings of an American cruise missile, according to an analysis by The New York Times.
Photos of the fragments were posted to Telegram by Iran’s state broadcaster and were characterized as showing “the remains of the American missile that landed on the children of Minab school.”
The debris is displayed on a table near the shell of the Shajarah Tayyebeh elementary school, most of which was destroyed in a precision strike, according to an earlier analysis by The Times. At least 175 people, most of them children, were reportedly killed.
Among the weapon remnants displayed, The Times identified U.S.-made components, including a steering mechanism and a satellite antenna.IRIB, via Telegram
While it is not clear where or how the fragments were recovered — or whether they pertain specifically to the school strike — they contain serial numbers and other details that are consistent with how the Department of Defense and its suppliers categorize and label munitions. The remnants appear to be from a U.S.-made Tomahawk cruise missile manufactured in 2014 or later.
Evidence analyzed by The New York Times has been mounting that the school was hit during a series of U.S. strikes targeting an adjacent naval base. On Sunday, a video was uploaded by Iran’s semiofficial Mehr News Agency, that The Times and other outlets identified as a Tomahawk cruise missile striking a medical building in the naval base. The Pentagon categorizes the Tomahawk as a precision-guided munition.
The Defense Department released videos of U.S. Navy warships firing Tomahawks at Iran on Feb. 28, the first day of the strikes, and the day the school was hit, and Gen. Dan Caine, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said in two separate appearances last week that Navy-launched Tomahawks were used to attack targets along Iran’s southern coast during the opening hours of the war.
On Saturday, Mr. Trump made the assertion that the school was hit by Iran without offering any proof. On Monday, he again posited that scenario.
“Iran also has some Tomahawks,” he said in response to questions from a New York Times reporter at a news conference. “As you know, numerous other nations have Tomahawks. They buy them from us.”
During a press conference on Monday, President Trump suggested without evidence that Iran possessed Tomahawk missiles.
In fact, Iran has no Tomahawks. Any country the U.S. has sold Tomahawks to would have to obtain authorization from the State Department before transferring them to a third party, like Iran.
Mr. Trump also added that he was made aware that the Minab incident was under investigation and that whatever the results of that show he was “willing to live with it."
Besides the United States, only two countries are known to have Tomahawk missiles: Australia and Britain. Two additional countries have agreed to purchase them — Japan in 2024, and the Netherlands in 2025.
In October, Mr. Trump openly mused about providing Tomahawks to Ukraine, but never followed through on the idea.
Even if Iran were able to somehow obtain a Tomahawk, it lacks the technical equipment and capabilities that are used to program their flight paths and upload that data into the missile’s onboard computer. Iran would also have to be in possession of a launcher capable of firing a Tomahawk without damaging it.
Iran has produced two models of cruise missiles for attacking land-based targets. But both of those weapons have design features that visually set them apart from a Tomahawk, even when viewed from a distance.
In the photos of the weapons debris, one remnant is marked SDL ANTENNA, or satellite data link antenna, part of a communications system installed in more modern versions of the Tomahawk. A number unique to Department of Defense contracts indicates that the component was supplied to the U.S. military as part of a 2014 order. The name of Ball Aerospace Technologies, a weapons manufacturer based in Boulder, Colo., that was acquired by BAE in 2024, is imprinted on the part.
Manufacturer’s name
Ball Aerospace &
Technologies Corp.
Contract year
2014
Dept. of Defense
code
Source: Iran’s state-run IRIB news channel, via Telegram.Kenan Davis/The New York Times
Another remnant is stamped with “Made in USA” and bears the name of Globe Motors, an Ohio-based manufacturer. According to the official open-data source for American federal government spending, the company has been awarded millions of dollars in Department of Defense contracts for components, including the actuator motors used to move the guidance fins that steer Tomahawk missiles.
The photos match remnants documented in Tomahawk missile attacks in previous conflicts, including the Globe Motors component, as well as a circuit board, both photographed in Yemen, and archived by the Open Source Munitions Portal, a database of weapon fragments found in conflict zones. A similar Globe Motors component has also been found in Syria.
Trevor Ball, a former U.S. Army explosive ordnance disposal technician who works with the research collective Bellingcat, also identified the components as being part of a Tomahawk missile. He has identified similar missile remnants photographed at other attack sites in Iran since the start of the Israeli-U.S. war.
Shawn McCreesh contributed reporting.
Christiaan Triebert is a Times reporter working on the Visual Investigations team, a group that combines traditional reporting with digital sleuthing and analysis of visual evidence to verify and source facts from around the world.
John Ismay is a reporter covering the Pentagon for The Times. He served as an explosive ordnance disposal officer in the U.S. Navy.“
“The Pentagon, under Pete Hegseth’s leadership, significantly reduced staffing and resources dedicated to civilian protection strategies. This reduction, impacting a center established to minimize civilian casualties, has raised concerns about the potential consequences for civilian safety in ongoing conflicts.
As the civilian toll in Iran mounts, some officials point to the impact of Pete Hegseth’s hostility to battlefield restraint.
A mourner throws flower petals on coffins of children killed in a strike on a primary school on March 3, 2026, in this photograph released by Iran's ISNA news agency. (Amirhossein Khorgooei / ISNA / AFP / Getty)
Even before President Trump returned to office, his advisers sought to remove what they saw as unnecessary constraints on the way the American military fights. The man Trump had tapped to lead the Pentagon, Pete Hegseth, had long complained about “weak” and “woke” policies that he believed were hampering the cause of battlefield victory.
In early 2025, ahead of Trump’s second inauguration, members of his transition team asked military officials to review and potentially close a unit—a “center of excellence,” in Pentagon parlance—established to help the military devise better strategies to protect civilians. The creation of the Civilian Protection Center of Excellence in 2023 was part of an effort to understand why thousands of noncombatants had died in the battle against the Islamic State terrorist group and to find ways to limit civilian deaths in counterinsurgency struggles.
The center was created by law, so it couldn’t be closed outright. But the administration has dramatically reduced staffing there and fired or reassigned personnel focused on preventing civilian harm across the military. Total staff working on the issue across the military, which numbered nearly 200 at its peak, has been reduced by about 90 percent over the past year, people familiar with the matter told me.”
Malachy Browne is an expert in verifying online imagery, and John Ismay is a former Navy bomb disposal officer.
The video, uploaded on Sunday by Iran’s semiofficial Mehr News Agency and verified by The New York Times, shows a Tomahawk cruise missile striking a naval base beside the school in the town of Minab on Feb. 28. The U.S. military is the only force involved in the conflict that uses Tomahawk missiles.
A body of evidenceassembled by The Times— including satellite imagery, social media posts and other verified videos — indicates that the Shajarah Tayyebeh elementary school building was severely damaged by a precision strike that occurred at the same time as attacks on the naval base. The base is operated by the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps.
Asked by a reporter from The Times on Saturday if the United States had bombed the school, President Trump said: “No. In my opinion and based on what I’ve seen, that was done by Iran.” He said, “They’re very inaccurate, as you know, with their munitions.” Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, who was standing beside Mr. Trump, said the Pentagon was investigating, “but the only side that targets civilians is Iran.”
President Trump said he believed that Iran was responsible for a strike on an elementary school that reportedly killed 175 people.
The video of the strike, which was first reported by the research collectiveBellingcat, was independently verified by The Times. We compared features visible in the footage to new satellite imagery captured days after the strikes in Minab.
The video was filmed from a construction site opposite the base and shows a worn, dirt path across a grassy area and piles of debris also evident in recent satellite imagery, bolstering its credibility. The video also comports with otherverified videostaken in the immediate aftermath of the strikes.
A Times analysis of the video shows the missile striking a buildingdescribedas amedical clinicin the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps base. Plumes of smoke and debris shoot out of the building after it is hit as the distant screams of onlookers are heard.
As the camera pans to the right, large plumes of dust and smoke are already billowing from the area around the elementary school, suggesting that it had been struck shortly before the strike on the naval base. This is supported by atimeline of the strikesassembled by The Times that shows the school was hit around the time as the base.
Several other buildings inside the naval base were also hit by precision strikes in the attack, an analysis of satellite imagery showed. Determining precisely what happened has been impeded by the lack of visible weapons fragments and the inability of outside reporters to reach the scene.
The Times has identified the weapon seen in the new video as a Tomahawk cruise missile, a weapon that neither the Israeli military nor the Iranian military has. Dozens of Tomahawks have been launched by U.S. Navy warships into Iran since Feb. 28, when the U.S.-Israeli attack on Iran began.
U.S. Central Command said a video it released of several Tomahawks being launched from Navy ships was filmed on Feb. 28, the day the Iranian base and school were hit.
The Defense Departmentdescribes Tomahawksas “long-range, highly accurate” guided missiles that can fly about 1,000 miles. They are programmed with a specific flight plan before launch, and the missiles steer themselves to their targets.
EachTomahawkis about 20 feet long and has a wingspan of eight and a half feet, according to the Navy. The most commonly used Tomahawks have warheads that contain the explosive power of about 300 pounds of TNT.
Trevor Ball, a former U.S. Army explosive ordnance disposal technician who works with Bellingcat, alsoidentified the missilein the video as a Tomahawk, as did another weapons expert, Chris Cobb-Smith, director of Chiron Resources, a security and logistics agency.
Gen. Dan Caine, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said at a news conference on Wednesday that U.S. forces were carrying out strikes in southern Iran at the time the naval base and school were hit. A map he presented showed that an area including Minab, which is near the Strait of Hormuz, had been targeted by strikes in the first 100 hours of the operation, although it did not explicitly identify the town.
“Along the southern axis, the U.S.S. Abraham Lincoln strike group has continued to provide pressure from the sea along the southeastern side of the coast and has been attriting naval capability all along the strait,” the general said.
It is not the only time that General Caine has acknowledged the role Tomahawk missiles played in the early hours of the war.
“The first shooters at sea were Tomahawks unleashed by the United States Navy,” hesaidin a briefing to reporters at the Pentagon on March 2, as the Navy “began to conduct strikes across the southern flank in Iran.”
In June, a Navy submarinelaunchedmore than two dozen Tomahawks at a nuclear facility in Isfahan, Iran, as part of the 12-Day war.
Shawn McCreeshcontributed reporting.Shawn PaikandMcKinnon de Kuypercontributed video production.
John Ismayis a reporter covering the Pentagon for The Times. He served as an explosive ordnance disposal officer in the U.S. Navy."
Vital Desalination Plants in Iran and Bahrain Are Attacked
"Strikes on nonmilitary infrastructure were a “serious escalation,” analysts said, and could widen the war’s impact on civilians.
A view of Bahrain from the window of a plane in 2023. Persian Gulf countries depend heavily on desalination technology.RuelleRuelle/Universal Images Group, via Getty Images
Water desalination plants have come under attack in Iran and on the Persian Gulf island of Bahrain over the weekend, threatening a resource vital to life in the harsh desert climates of the region.
On Saturday, Iran’s foreign minister, Abbas Araghchi, accused the United States of attacking a desalination plant on Qeshm Island, affecting the water supply for 30 villages.
“The U.S. set this precedent, not Iran,” hesaidon social media, calling the attack “a dangerous move with grave consequences.”
Capt. Tim Hawkins, a spokesman for the U.S. Central Command, said that U.S. forces were not responsible for that attack.
A day later, Bahrain’s interior ministry said that an Iranian drone had “caused material damage” to a desalination plant there, accusing Iran of “indiscriminately” attacking civilian targets. The country’s water and electricity authority said there had been “no impact on water supplies or water network capacity.”
It was not immediately clear whether either plant was still functioning. And there was no immediate comment from Iran on Bahrain’s allegation.
Iran has facedsevere water shortagesin recent years, and Gulf countries like Bahrain depend heavily on desalination technology — which turns seawater into drinking water — to sustain tens of millions of people. Desalination infrastructure is one of the most vulnerable military targets in the region because without it, the Gulf’s sprawling metropolises would effectively collapse.
“Targeting a desalination plant in Bahrain crosses an important threshold and represents a serious escalation,” said Abdullah Baabood, an Omani academic at Waseda University in Japan.
“In the Gulf, desalination facilities are not merely infrastructure,” he added. “They are essential lifelines that supply drinking water to millions. Striking them risks turning a military confrontation into a direct threat to civilian survival.”
Iranian officials have said that their attacks in the Gulf countries, which are close allies of the United States, are a response to the intense American-Israeli bombing campaign that began in Iran on Feb. 28 and that they are aimed at American military bases and U.S. soldiers, not civilians.
However, the hundreds of Iranian missiles and drones shot at the Gulf countries over the past week have also damaged civilian infrastructure, including airports, hotels and energy facilities. Gulf military forces, which have advanced missile-defense systems, have intercepted a vast majority of those attacks. But at least 10 civilians have been killed, according to a New York Times tally of official announcements.
Political analysts and diplomats have long warned about the vulnerability of desalination plants in the region should they become military targets.
In 2008, a diplomaticcablesent from the U.S. embassy in the Saudi capital, Riyadh, and later released by WikiLeaks warned that a single desalination plant provided Riyadh with more than 90 percent of its drinking water at the time.
The city “would have to evacuate within a week if the plant, its pipelines or associated power infrastructure were seriously damaged or destroyed,” the author wrote. “The current structure of the Saudi government could not exist” without the plant, the cable added.
Since then, the Saudi government has invested significantly in expandingwater storage,reducing its vulnerability.
At the same time, the region’s cities have grown rapidly, drawing in large populations of foreign workers andstrainingthefragile ecosystemsthat underpin them.
Eric Schmittcontributed reporting from Washington.
Vivian Nereimis the lead reporter for The Times covering the countries of the Arabian Peninsula. She is based in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia."
