DOV FISCHER: A Flawed President Whose Pugnacious Divisiveness Uniquely Suits the Moment’s Need.

BREAKING: Syrian Army lifts the siege on Deir Ezzor.

Minutes ago, the first tank from the Syrian Arab Army’s 17th Division reached the 137th Brigade Base in besieged Deir Ezzor, a source told Al-Masdar News.

The Syrian Arab Army was able to break-through the Islamic State’s defenses this afternoon after a fierce battle that lasted for several hours.

As a result of this advance, the Syrian Arab Army has lifted the 28 month long siege on the Deir Ezzor Governorate.

The odds of negotiating the Assad regime out of existence get smaller every day.

MICHAEL LEDEEN: Is ‘Antifa’ Antifascist?

HEH: The Cajun Navy’s New Naval Destroyer CNS Thibodeaux Has Been Delivered Just in Time.

CLAUDIA ROSETT: Kim Jong Un’s Thermonuclear Joyride.

IT WON’T BE A NATION; IT WILL BE A TECH GIANT: Putin says the nation that leads in AI ‘will be the ruler of the world.’

SPENGLER’S SHOCK CONFESSION: I’m the Jewish Banker Behind the Soros Fortune.

A BIGGER BANG: South Korea, U.S. to scrap warhead weight limit on South Korean missiles.

Under the existing missile pact between the United States and South Korea, Seoul’s warheads currently face a cap of 500 kg (1100 lb).

The agreement, last amended in 2012, was in the process of being changed in the wake of a series of missile tests by North Korea this year after Moon took office in May, including two intercontinental ballistic missile launches.

An unlimited warhead weight allowance would enable the South to strike North Korea with greater force in the event of a military conflict.

The missiles would still be bound by a flight range cap of 800 km. No changes to the flight range were mentioned in the Blue House statement.

Range isn’t an issue, given North Korea’s small size and immediate proximity to South Korea. Increased destructive power is an issue, given that South Korean President Moon Jae-in was elected on a more dovish, or at least conciliatory platform toward the North.

RICHARD FERNANDEZ: The End of Containment?

Read the whole thing. I’d just add that containment was put on life support when Clinton and Bush both decided it was best to play Kick the Can with Pyongyang. And Obama pulled the plug on it with his Iran deal.

PARENTING: Forget the Terrible Twos, It’s ThreEVILs You Have to Worry About.

Our boys both got through the Terrible Twos with barely an incident, but they have no idea how lucky they were that we allowed them to see the age of four.

WELL, THIS IS THE 21ST CENTURY, YOU KNOW: Armed Robots Fight Alongside Soldiers at National Guard Exercise.

CHRISTIAN TOTO: 5 Reasons to Cheer the Fall Movie Season’s Arrival.

BILL ROGGIO: Anatomy of a Taliban ambush.

Before the ambush begins, the Taliban fighter who was recording the attack captures two US Blackhawk helicopters on video as they are flying over the convoy. The Taliban fighters, who are gathering in the open, are undeterred by the Blackhawks, and launch their ambush shortly afterward. At one point during the fighting, what appears to be a military attack aircraft is captured on film, but it does not open fire on the ambush team.

The Taliban ambush, while not very sophisticated, was effective. The fighters open fire on the convoy with machine guns and assault rifles from multiple positions. It does not appear that IEDs, RPGs, recoilless rifles or other heavy weapons were used to target the convoy. Although the Taliban was firing from locations that included buildings, the fighters did not appear to take advantage of rooftops and instead fired from ground level.

Yet the Taliban was able to successfully destroy multiple vehicles in the attack. First, the fighters hit a fuel tanker, then several military vehicles were hit. As the segment ends, multiple vehicles are ablaze along the a stretch of the road. At the end of the scene, the Taliban fighters casually walk away.

The video highlights a major problem that Afghan and Coalition forces face throughout the country: the Taliban has demonstrated that it can take the fight to Afghan forces with little fear of being targeted by air assets. The Taliban is often able to overrun military bases and district centers, and loiter in the area for nearly a day without taking fire.

This is no way to win a war.

UPDATE FROM J. CHRISTIAN ADAMS: Federal Court Dismisses Entire Justice Department Mosque Case.

I’LL WAIT FOR THE INEVITABLE DISCOUNT: You Can Meet Hillary Clinton For A Few Thousand Bucks.

DIANE FEINSTEIN: Hurricane Recovery ‘Takes the Place of the Wall’ in Government Funding Debate.

ENDGAME? France says powers must impose transition on Syrians, no role for Assad.

Jean-Yves Le Drian’s comments come despite what has appeared to be a softening in Paris’ position since the arrival of President Emmanuel Macron.

Macron’s election victory gave Paris, which is a key backer of the Syrian opposition and the second-largest contributor to the U.S.-led coalition fighting Islamic State, a chance to re-examine its policy in the country.

The change proposed by Macron was to drop demands Assad step down as a pre-condition for talks, although French officials still insist he cannot be the long-term future for Syria.

So less of an endgame than a non-starter then.

LATE-STAGE SOCIALISM: Venezuela’s Government Reports Nearly 10,000 Homicides in 2017.

Opposition lawmaker Simón Calzadilla expressed skepticism, citing figures from the nongovernmental Venezuelan Violence Observatory group that show Venezuela’s homicide rate has been increasing in recent years. It reported 27,875 violent deaths in 2015 and 28,468 in 2016.

“And this year it seems that we are going to break all the records,” Calzadilla said at a Tuesday news conference, predicting the homicide count could top 33,000.

Why the wildly disparate numbers? In part, it’s because Venezuela’s government does not include extrajudicial killings in its homicide totals, though human rights group do, two experts with the Brazilian think tank Igarapé Institute wrote in the Los Angeles Times earlier this year.

You may safely translate “extrajudicial killings” to “political assassinations.”

OK, YES, THAT IS FUNNY: Trevor Noah Finally Says Something Funny, Labels Antifa ‘Vegan ISIS.’

SAD: First-Time Homebuyers Decline by 40 Percent Since 2004.

IT MIGHT NOT BE OVER YET: Two new tropical threats are taking shape in the Gulf of Mexico and Atlantic Ocean.

ELI LAKE: Trump Is Right. Nuclear Talks With North Korea Are Pointless.

But the U.S. must prepare for more aggression from Pyongyang. In overlooked congressional testimony from January, Eberstadt recommends a policy of bolstering missile defense systems for South Korea, Japan and the U.S. and encouraging South Korea to bolster its civilian defense capabilities. Eberstadt also recommends doubling down on counter-proliferation, interdicting North Korean ships on the high seas, targeting its illicit procurement network, and other steps past administrations have taken to make it harder for the regime to perfect its missiles and nuclear weapons.

I would add to this list: covert operations aimed at sabotaging these programs similar to the Stuxnet virus deployed against Iran’s centrifuges in 2009 and 2010.

Eberstadt also warns that it’s important to understand that North Korea’s nuclear program is not just an insurance policy for the survival of the regime, as most experts understand it. He says nuclear weapons are also a component of the country’s strategy to break the U.S. alliance with South Korea. He points out that unification of the peninsula has been a consistent aim of the Kim family since the start of the Korean War. They have shown no sign of giving this up. This means the U.S. must plan now for a response to a conventional military attack on South Korea.

If North Korea progresses all the way to having intercontinental-range missiles tipped with nuclear warheads, tucked away in hardened silos, then our range of options will shrink from “bad and worse” all the way down to “nearly unimaginable.”

21ST CENTURY HEADLINES: Louisiana judge rules Sofia Vergara’s frozen embryos are ‘citizens of California.’

EXPLAINER: Here’s Why a Storm Surge in Gas Prices Should Settle Down Soon.

THANKS, OBAMA: Nebulous Language Enables Tehran’s Missile Ambitions.

What the Iran nuclear agreement essentially does is impose a time-bound pause of Iran’s nuclear weapons capabilities along with some monitoring provisions to try to prevent cheating. But the worry is that the Iranians may not even need to cheat and instead can just wait the thing out. Meanwhile, they continue to make progress on the missiles.

Remember, Iran was already thought to be pretty much where it presumably wanted to be in terms of nuclear weapons technology. Former U.S. President Barack Obama said that one of the accomplishments of the agreement was to move Iran from just a few months away from being able to produce a nuclear weapon to a year or more. But that means that even now, they are within a year or so of the “breakout” capability to do that.

But Iran has a longer road ahead on the missile front, where they too are working feverishly just like the North Koreans. Put simply, the nuclear agreement has at best paused one aspect of becoming a nuclear weapons power, the weapons themselves, where Iran had already gotten close to the finish line, while allowing the Iranians to continue making progress on developing, producing, and deploying ever longer-range and more accurate missiles. Worse still, because of sanctions relief, including the release of vast frozen assets that had been held by the United States for decades, the nuclear deal has infused Iran with new resources that it can plow into its missile programs. All of this at the same time the nuclear deal gives Tehran a greater sense of international legitimacy for abiding by the agreement.

The agreement Obama signed is so bad in nearly every possible way, that it’s impossible to believe it isn’t exactly what he wanted.