https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2020/01/ ... 07743.html
Soleimani killed in US air strike: All the latest updates
Tensions between the United States and Iran escalated on Friday after a US air strike killed Qassem Soleimani, the head of Iran's elite Quds Force, and Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis, the deputy commander of Iran-backed militias known as the Popular Mobilization Forces, or PMF.
The Pentagon confirmed the strike at Baghdad's international airport, saying it came "at the direction of the president". ...
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2020/01/ ... 17666.html
General Qassem Soleimani, the head of Iran's elite Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps' (IRGC's) Quds Force, and architect of its regional security apparatus, has been killed following a US air raid at Baghdad's international airport on Friday.
The White House and the Pentagon confirmed the killing of Soleimani in Iraq, saying the attack was carried out at the direction of US President Donald Trump and was aimed at deterring future attacks allegedly being planned by Iran.
A three-day national mourning period has been declared in Iran in honour of Soleimani....
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2020/01/ ... 26102.html
US-Iran tensions have peaked with the United States assassination of Qassem Soleimani, a 62-year-old who headed the foreign arm of Iran's elite military force.
Soleimani was deeply popular at home and among Tehran's allies.
He survived several previous assassination attempts over the past 20 years and was credited with helping armed groups defeat the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL or ISIS) group.
More:
Who was Qassem Soleimani, Iran's IRGC's Quds Force leader?
Soleimani killed in US air raid: All the latest updates
Qassem Soleimani assassination: Trump, Pompeo defend decision
Here are five things to know:
What has happened?...
Trump didn't consult with Congress, much less inform any US allies.
https://thehill.com/policy/defense/4766 ... al-without
Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) on Thursday said that an airstrike that killed Iranian Maj. Gen. Qassem Soleimani was not authorized and Congress was not consulted on the decision.
“The Administration has conducted tonight’s strikes in Iraq targeting high-level Iranian military officials and killing Iranian Quds Force Commander Qasem Soleimani without an Authorization for Use of Military Force (AUMF) against Iran," Pelosi said in a statement.
"Further, this action was taken without the consultation of the Congress," she added. ...
"We cannot put the lives of American service members, diplomats and others further at risk by engaging in provocative and disproportionate actions," the top House Democrat said.
(However, newer reports suggest that Trump did inform some of his Republican supporters in Congress and they kept Trump's plans secret from their colleagues.)
I doubt if he even paid much attention to anything his advisers told him- if there's anyone left who had the guts and honesty to tell him something he doesn't want to hear - he seems to have gotten rid of all of "the adults" by now. And he doesn't have the attention span or intelligence to consider complicated situations and scenarios and consequences, even if they did. From all reports, he just shouts until he gets his way.
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2020/01/ ... 43596.html
World reacts to US killing of Iran's Qassem Soleimani in Iraq
Leaders across the world warn that US's targeted killing of Iranian top general could ignite conflict in region.
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2020/01/ ... 12024.html
Iraq is poised for a period of uncertainty as top Shia leaders warned of repercussions following the killing of top Iran general Qassem Soleimani by a United States air strike in Baghdad on Friday. Iraqi protesters have also called on Tehran and Washington to take their battle elsewhere...
Iraq's top Shia leader Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani condemned the US attack and called on all parties to practice restraint, ... "The vicious attack ... is an insolent breach of Iraqi sovereignty and international agreements. It led to the killing of several commanders who defeated Islamic State terrorists," Sistani's office said....
Although there were some scenes of celebration in Tahrir Square, the majority of protesters are very concerned about the implications of these developments," Renad Mansour, head of the Iraq Initiative at London's Chatham House, told Al Jazeera. "This is a dangerous time for Iraq as it moves into a period of greater instability and uncertainty.....
Prime Minister Abdul Mahdi said the killings on Friday were "a dangerous escalation that will light the fuse of a destructive war in Iraq, the region, and the world". "The assassination of an Iraqi military commander who holds an official position is considered aggression on Iraq ... and the liquidation of leading Iraqi figures or those from a brotherly country on Iraqi soil is a massive breach of sovereignty," he said before adding that the US strike violated the terms of the US military presence in Iraq... Some officials and parliamentarians have already called for the expulsion of US troops from Iraq following the attack....
So it sounds like Trump treated Iraq like his own backyard again and didn't inform the Iraqis either (no surprise, given that some of their own military leaders were killed in the air strike)
https://thehill.com/homenews/administra ... -years-ago
Trump addressed the decision to launch air strikes that killed Iran's most powerful military commander in a pair of tweets that marked his first public comments on authorizing the action.
“General Qassem Soleimani has killed or badly wounded thousands of Americans over an extended period of time, and was plotting to kill many more...but got caught! He was directly and indirectly responsible for the death of millions of people, including the recent large number … of PROTESTERS killed in Iran itself,” Trump tweeted Friday morning.
“While Iran will never be able to properly admit it, Soleimani was both hated and feared within the country. They are not nearly as saddened as the leaders will let the outside world believe. He should have been taken out many years ago!” the president wrote. ...
The State Department on Friday urged U.S. citizens to leave Iraq immediately, and said that American citizens “should not approach” the U.S. embassy in Baghdad. ...
Trump is not the first person in the world to know that Soleimani was responsible for a lot of deaths and atrocities, not to mention being a serious obstacle for the U.S.'s political aims in the Middle East.* He's just the first world leader to think the simple solution to this is to kill Soleimani, and never mind the fact that he's part of a government and someone similar will take his place and continue his activities.
*Though ISIS is probably among those celebrating his death, so this is kind of a mixed bag even without the other considerations.
https://thehill.com/policy/energy-envir ... ary-leader
Oil prices are rising in response to the killing of Iranian Maj. Gen. Qassem Soleimani.
U.S. oil futures rose 3.7 percent Friday morning while oil prices rose to just more than $63 a barrel following news of the Iranian military leader's killing in Iraq in a U.S. air strike ordered by President Trump.
The reverberations of the attack were also felt elsewhere in the market, as the Dow dropped more than 300 points at its opening before clawing back some of the losses. ....
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/worl ... 70396.html
Nato suspends Isis operations in Iraq, as Iran vows revenge on Trump after killing of top commander
‘The repercussions and consequences will be unthinkable,’ analyst says
The Nato pullback from Iraq is a blow to efforts to keep Isis from regrouping. Hundreds of western soldiers from a broad coalition of countries are in Iraq training local armed forces to take on jihadis in the country’s northern mountains and western desert. Denmark and Sweden had already announced they were withdrawing military personnel.
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2020/01/ ... 02486.html
The United States is sending nearly 3,000 additional troops to the Middle East from the 82nd Airborne Division as a precaution amid rising threats to American forces in the region, US officials said on Friday...
I was afraid something like this might happen, given Trump's weakening position domestically. I'm sure he knows the media and many Americans will back him in a wave of "patriotism" if it comes to war - and by the time the political repercussions hit, he may be long gone. Not to mention that none of the consequences will ever touch him or his family, even in the worst case scenario, if this ends up being the spark that lights the powder keg of the Middle East. They will be protected.
I've already seen some reporting in US newspapers that glosses over the complicated situation in Iraq and the dangers of Trump's seriously stupid act. Does anyone ever bother to think about how the US would react if another country bombed and killed one of our military leaders? Or do we just get to do whatever we like because we have a big military plus a lot of economic power? And has anyone been paying attention to the alliances and increased belligerence, including recent joint military exercises by China, Russia and Iran? It was Trump who pushed Iran toward that group, by isolating them and "punishing" them repeatedly when they were in dire straits from both economic pressures and natural disasters, instead of trying to use the Iran nuclear deal to nudge them toward alliances with western countries. This mess is of his making and he's making it worse.
Anyway, here's an accurate news report about the events of the last week, including the fact that protesters had left the US embassy (though they continued a sit-in elsewhere in the city) long before Trump decided to attack Iran:
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2020/01/ ... 22283.html
How tensions between US and Iran escalated
A recap of how events unfolded in the past week, leading to the US air attack that killed Qassem Soleimani in Baghdad.
Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei swiftly pledged to take "severe revenge" for Soleimani's death, the biggest escalation yet in a feared proxy war between Iran and the US on Iraq, where the US and Iran have vied for influence since the US-led invasion in 2003.
While the US has maintained a military presence in the country, leading a coalition to fight the ISIL (ISIS) group, Iran wields vast influence over Iraqi politics and also backs a number of Iraqi militias within the Popular Mobilisation Forces (PMF), an umbrella of armed groups. The militias have long sought the withdrawal of US forces from Iraq.
Amid concern that the killing of Soleimani could lead to a military escalation in Iraq and the wider region, here is a recap of the recent events that led to the killing....
I'm sure Bush shares some of the blame, for starting the ill-advised Iraq war that eventually created this mess in Iraq. But you can either work with what you've got and de-escalate things, or you can play Rambo and damn the consequences. Needless to say, Trump chooses the latter, especially when it benefits him politically - particularly with his "base."
https://thehill.com/homenews/administra ... ike-on-top
President Trump tweeted Friday that Iran “never won a war, but never lost a negotiation” hours after the Pentagon confirmed that he ordered an airstrike that killed a top Iranian commander in Iraq....
Trump tweeted an image of the American flag with no text shortly before the Pentagon announcement late Thursday and following reports that an airstrike had killed Maj. Gen. Qassem Soleimani, the head of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps' Quds Force....
So we're in a dangerous situation with an idiot who doesn't listen to anyone but himself, has far too much power, and has an ego that says he's always right. Backed by Republican leadership that strongly resembles a cult and refuses to admit Dear Leader is ever wrong. In a country that has been partly insulated from the direct effects of wars in the past, leading to a sense of complacency - but in a world where weapons are more powerful and that may no longer be the case.
Edit: I agree with The Guardian's analyses.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/ ... t-us-trump
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfr ... iddle-east
And that of Mr Harden, though I disagree with his rather naive introductory paragraph. Of course, the Pentagon is going to release a statement justifying Trump's assassination of Soleimani, whether or not it's true (beyond the obvious lessons from the past, like "weapons of mass destruction," Trump has been creating a government that will lie for him, regardless of how plausible that lie is, and firing those who won't.)
"R. David Harden is managing director of the Georgetown Strategy Group and former assistant administrator at USAID’s Bureau for Democracy, Conflict, and Humanitarian Assistance, where he oversaw U.S. assistance to all global crises. He served as a Foreign Service Officer in Iraq, Saudi Arabia, and Israel for more than a decade. In May of 2019, President Trump awarded Mr. Harden the Distinguished Service Award, the highest award in the Foreign Service, for “sustained extraordinary accomplishment in the conduct of the foreign policy."
https://thehill.com/opinion/national-se ... east-again
Many others are also warning of what Trump has created:
James W. Pardew is a former U.S. ambassador to Bulgaria and career Army intelligence officer. He has served as deputy assistant secretary-general of NATO and is the author of "Peacemakers: American Leadership and the End of Genocide in the Balkans."
https://thehill.com/opinion/national-se ... -with-iran
Waist deep and sinking in the Middle East: We're now at war with Iran
In other news about the actual president of the United States (given tweets like the ones below, this is sometimes hard to believe):
https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archi ... re/604354/
Perhaps you, like me, are slowly returning to following the news closely after a break from your standard media diet over the holidays. That meant, among other things, mostly tuning out the president’s social-media feed. Perhaps you heard about the lowlights, such as when Donald Trump retweeted a message naming the presumptive whistle-blower in the Ukraine case. You weren’t looking at the feed regularly, though.
Then you checked out Twitter today to see what the president had to say on the first working day of the new year (Trump himself may or may not be working; he headed to his golf club this morning), and saw this:
A lot of very good people were taken down by a small group of Dirty (Filthy) Cops, politicians, government officials, and an investigation that was illegally started & that SPIED on my campaign. The Witch Hunt is sputtering badly, but still going on (Ukraine Hoax!). If this....
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 2, 2020
....had happened to a Presidential candidate, or President, who was a Democrat, everybody involved would long ago be in jail for treason (and more), and it would be considered the CRIME OF THE CENTURY, far bigger and more sinister than Watergate!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 2, 2020
There’s a lot going on here. None of it is very good, and almost none of it makes any sense. ...
And this is the person with the power to order a nuclear strike.
Evangelical editor surprised at the strength of Trump's cult following and their ignorance:
https://thehill.com/blogs/blog-briefing ... gnorant-of
Christianity Today editor-in-chief Mark Galli says in a new interview that he was shocked by the reaction to the magazine's recent editorial calling for President Trump’s removal from office...
“I’ve been surprised by the ethical naïveté of the response I’m receiving to the editorial. There does seem to be widespread ignorance — that is the best word I can come up with — of the gravity of Trump’s moral failings. ...
No kidding. It's a cult, fed by a ratings game where stations like Fox, One America and Sinclair affiliates feed people half truths and incomplete information to outrage them and keep them watching (not that some liberal outlets don't do the same thing sometimes, but they're not the problem right now.) The same people who claimed Trump would get us out of the endless wars in the Middle East are today supporting Dear Leader for the assassination of Soleimani, and never mind the obvious consequences.
https://thehill.com/homenews/administra ... cuments-in
A federal judge ruled Friday that Lev Parnas, a known associate of President Trump's personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani, can turn over documents and data to Congress as a Senate impeachment trial awaits Trump....
Parnas and Igor Fruman, also an associate of Giuliani's, aided the former New York City mayor in opening an investigation into former Vice President Joe Biden and his son, Hunter Biden, in Ukraine...
https://thehill.com/business-a-lobbying ... ed-knowing
The home and office of Michael Esposito, the lobbyist who claimed he had inside access to the Trump administration but whom the president denied knowing, was searched by the FBI, The Washington Post reported Friday.
FBI agents are investigating Esposito for evidence of possible fraud, whether by defrauding his clients or financial fraud. Agents went to his home in Virginia and his firm, Federal Advocates, at 1666 K St. NW on Thursday....
EDIT:
Anyone who expected a coherent and believable justification from Dear Leader should be ashamed of themselves (yeah, we did this to stop a war? I don't suppose he could explain
how exactly this amazing sleight-of-hand is supposed to work?)
https://thehill.com/homenews/administra ... stop-a-war
President Trump on Friday defended his order to kill Iranian Maj. Gen. Qassem Soleimani...
“What the United States did yesterday should have been done long ago. A lot of lives would have been saved,” Trump said in a brief address from his Mar-a-Lago resort in Palm Beach, Fla. “We took action last night to stop a war. We did not take action to start a war.”
“Soleimani was plotting imminent and sinister attacks on American diplomats and military personnel, but we caught him in the act and terminated him,” the president added, describing the action as a “flawless, precision strike.”...
Trump’s statement, which lasted a few minutes and concluded without him taking questions, represented his first public remarks on the strike late Thursday....
Trump also appeared to threaten further action if Iran targets Americans around the globe in retaliation for the strike on Soleimani.
The United States has the best military, by far, anywhere in the world. We have the best intelligence in the world,” Trump said. “If Americans anywhere are threatened, we have all of those targets already fully identified and I am ready and prepared to take whatever action is necessary.”...
This pattern should be familiar by now. Trump did something stupid and had no real idea why, except "He's a bad guy - let's assassinate him." (something his former non-sycophant advisers had to talk him out of, more than once before). The trouble is, this is not just another dumb move that can be countered by people working hard behind the scenes. This time there will probably be serious consequences.
And that incompetent idiot and mob boss in the White House has no idea what to do with the fallout. He's read a speech someone wrote for him and flown back to his expensive golf club like a kid running home. I cannot imagine
any previous president not staying in the White House to receive reports and make decisions in a crisis like this.
Then again, maybe we're better off if he's golfing at Mar-a-Lago while other people try to deal with this.
Ooops, sorry. He's not golfing. He's actually gone to spew re-election propaganda and other rubbish at his evangelical supporters.
Trump spoke to reporters Friday afternoon before departing for a campaign event with evangelical supporters in Miami.
If there's anything Trump is good at, it's stoking division. He's working hard to turn religious people against his political enemies with lies.
https://thehill.com/homenews/administra ... n-our-side
President Trump rallied evangelical supporters in Miami on Friday, positioning himself as a champion of religious communities while ripping his Democratic opponents as “radical” leftists pursuing an “extreme, anti-religious and socialist” agenda....
“Together, we’re not only are we defending our Constitutional rights, we’re also defending religion itself, which is under siege,” Trump said. “Every Democrat candidate running for president is trying to punish religious believers and silence our churches and our pastors.”...
Before he began his remarks, a group of prominent evangelicals prayed for the president on stage. Trump — who was welcomed with chants of “USA! USA!” — described the evangelicals coalition as “one of the most important grassroots movements in American history.”
Trump briefly recognized members of the U.S. military at the top of his remarks, mentioning the October raid that led to the death of ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi and boasting about the drone strike in Baghdad late Thursday that killed Gen. Qassem Soleimani, the commander of Iran’s Quds Force....
And it looks like Trump's sons - who are not in the government, have no security clearances, and should never have heard something this sensitive - might have known what was going to happen even if Congress didn't:
https://hillreporter.com/deleted-tweet- ... time-54791
Those protests broke out on December 31 of last year, according to the New York Times. On that same date, Eric Trump sent out a tweet, which has since been deleted. Twitter user @realTuckFrumper had a screengrab of the tweet, which suggested military action was coming forth....
“Bout to open up a big ol’ can of whoop ass,” Eric Trump’s tweet read. It was followed with a flag emoji.
Other users on social media also verified the tweet as being legitimately posted by Eric Trump on that date. There’s no indication or confirmation that he was indeed aware of military action occurring later on in the week, but the words from Eric Trump caught many people’s attention after the airstrikes were announced.
Trump supporters are trying to pass this off as "well, Eric was just talking about sending in the Marines, which everyone knew." If so, why did he delete it?
It also seems Trump was giving hints about his plan to lots of his buddies and/or people he wanted to impress.
https://www.thedailybeast.com/trump-tol ... anis-death
In the five days prior to launching a strike that killed Iran’s most important military leader, Donald Trump roamed the halls of Mar-a-Lago, his private resort in Florida, and started dropping hints to close associates and club-goers that something huge was coming....
“He kept saying, ‘You’ll see,’” one of the sources recalled, describing a conversation with Trump days before Thursday’s strike. ...
It also sounds like the promised classified briefing to Congress was basically "trust me, Iran was planning something horrible" without details. Which suggests the explanation might have been a cobbled-together whitewash. For all we know, Trump's motivation may have been as simple as "The killed an American contractor, so we'll retaliate and make them pay even more." which fits with his usual methods.
A classified briefing on Friday... featured broad claims about what the Iranians were planning and little evidence of planning to bring about the “de-escalation” the administration says it wants. ...
“This administration has absolutely not earned the benefit of the doubt when it makes these kinds of claims. When you’re taking action that could lead to the third American war in the Middle East in 20 years, you need to do better than these kinds of assertions,” said a Senate aide in the room. ...
Nor, said four sources who requested anonymity to discuss a classified briefing, did the briefers provide detail on a key question surrounding an act of war against a regional power: what next? ...
According to other information in this article, we also just made the Iraqis' attempts at forming a new coalition government even more difficult.
https://thehill.com/homenews/administra ... helpful-as
Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said that the United States' European allies "haven't been as helpful as I wish that they could be" following the U.S. strike in Iraq on Thursday that killed Iran's top military commander, Qassem Soleimani.
"Frankly, the Europeans haven't been as helpful as I wished that they could be," Pompeo told Fox News' Sean Hannity during an interview Friday night.
"The Brits, the French, the Germans all need to understand that what we did, what the Americans did, saved lives in Europe as well."...
In other words, after years of Trump breaking ties and damaging relationships, we are, not surprisingly, on our own. (Not to mention that Europeans are, in general, far better informed by their news media than we are, and it would be hard for any leader to make them swallow nonsense like "Trump just stopped a war." )
Lies and propaganda from Pompeo:
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/04/worl ... video.html
The video lasted only 22 seconds but its message seemed clear, and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo wanted the world to know so he posted it to his Twitter account for his 1.1 million followers.
“Iraqis — Iraqis — dancing in the street for freedom; thankful that General Soleimani is no more,” Mr. Pompeo wrote.
The video was authentic, but the problem was that Mr. Pompeo’s description of it was exaggerated.... the group of men was very small, that no one joined in and that the minor demonstration was over in less than two minutes.
Mr. Pompeo’s tweet, widely shared, is another example of how misinformation spreads in the age of social media when people are quick to accept and promote information that validates their own world views.
...The State Department spokeswoman, Morgan Ortagus, declined to comment on the video.
...The goal with a tweet like that is to create a narrative and editorialize, said Joan Donovan, a lecturer at Harvard who specializes in protest communication. This typically occurs in the first few days of an event — when those with a vested interest hope to score the dominant narrative to shape how the story of a historical moment is shared, Ms. Donovan said.....
This stuff is pervasive. It looks to me as if at least one columnist at The Atlantic was taken in by the supposed scenes of widespread celebration in Iraq.
https://thehill.com/homenews/state-watc ... ani-strike
More than 70 protests across the country are planned for Saturday to condemn the Pentagon’s killing of Iran’s top general Qassem Soleimani and the decision to send thousands of more troops to the Middle East.
The protests are being organized by Act Now to Stop War and End Racism (ANSWER), a U.S.-based anti-war coalition, in cooperation with more than a dozen other anti-war groups. Protesters are expected to demonstrate outside the White House, in Times Square, at the Trump Tower in Chicago and at the Brandenberg Gate in Berlin, among other locations.
“The targeted assassination and murder of a central leader of Iran is designed to initiate a new war," ANSWER said on its website. "Unless the people of the United States rise up and stop it, this war will engulf the whole region and could quickly turn into a global conflict of unpredictable scope and potentially the gravest consequences."
btw, I love how The Hill calls this "the Pentagon's killing." No, sorry. The Pentagon carried it out. But Trump is the one who made this decision and he's now responsible for it.
Sadly, I suspect the protests in the U.S. will be small.
Incidentally, I'm also seeing some people who hate Trump say that they will nevertheless support him and "the troops" if it comes to war. I've always been uneasy about the recent wholesale worship of all things military, among both U.S. conservatives and liberals (but, interestingly enough, not necessarily among career military, who seem to be able to separate respect for a career choice, from constant praise and adulation). It reminds me strongly of historical accounts of Germany before Hitler, where the military were revered above civilians.* So I have the bad feeling that Dear Leader may have made the right move to keep himself in office.
* I don't necessarily mean that Trump is Hitler - though I do think he has the ego, lack of moral compass, and manipulativeness for it. But I'm concerned that American society appears to be heading for a bad place in general, with the combination of increased fearfulness/ passivity ("my school/employer/government needs to protect me from _____"), willingness to give up freedoms for protection, excessive pride ("We're the greatest at everything!" "USA! USA! USA!"), and reverence for all things military.
***********
Monday EDITs: Rather than starting another post, I'll put this here since they are all related to the crisis Trump started. The Orange Idiot is, once again, flailing around and trying to deal with the consequences of the things he set in motion (did they not have a plan for this likely consequence?), but with a toolbox of ideas limited by his very weak understanding of world affairs and politics.
https://www.cnbc.com/2020/01/06/trump-t ... efore.html
President Donald Trump threatened Sunday to slap sanctions on Iraq after its parliament passed a resolution calling for the government to expel foreign troops from the country....
Speaking to reporters on Air Force One, the U.S. president said: "If they do ask us to leave, if we don't do it in a very friendly basis, we will charge them sanctions like they've never seen before ever. It'll make Iranian sanctions look somewhat tame."
"We have a very extraordinarily expensive air base that's there. It cost billions of dollars to build. Long before my time. We're not leaving unless they pay us back for it," Trump said.
The president added that "If there's any hostility, that they do anything we think is inappropriate, we are going to put sanctions on Iraq, very big sanctions on Iraq."....
I also find it quite scary that we're being led by someone who can say
this and his GOP allies STILL aren't restraining him:
https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/sta ... 27112?s=20
Iran is talking very boldly about targeting certain USA assets as revenge for our ridding the world of their terrorist leader who had just killed an American, & badly wounded many others, not to mention all of the people he had killed over his lifetime, including recently....
....hundreds of Iranian protesters. He was already attacking our Embassy, and preparing for additional hits in other locations. Iran has been nothing but problems for many years. Let this serve as a WARNING that if Iran strikes any Americans, or American assets, we have.....
....targeted 52 Iranian sites (representing the 52 American hostages taken by Iran many years ago), some at a very high level & important to Iran & the Iranian culture, and those targets, and Iran itself, WILL BE HIT VERY FAST AND VERY HARD. The USA wants no more threats!
Besides the general craziness of these tweets, it's worth noting that one of the things he's proposing to bomb are cultural sites. The world rightly condemned the Taliban for this. Now the US president is saying that America will deliberately do the same thing.
And it seems the whole thing started because Trump couldn't recognize that one extreme option wasn't a good idea. And the current Pentagon officials didn't realize they were dealing with a moron (how could they be this blind?) and were dumb enough to offer it to him.
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/04/us/p ... imani.html
In the chaotic days leading to the death of Maj. Gen. Qassim Suleimani, Iran’s most powerful commander, top American military officials put the option of killing him — which they viewed as the most extreme response to recent Iranian-led violence in Iraq — on the menu they presented to President Trump.
They didn’t think he would take it. In the wars waged since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, Pentagon officials have often offered improbable options to presidents to make other possibilities appear more palatable....
Also summarized by Business Insider if you can't get the NY Times:
https://www.businessinsider.com/trump-h ... ani-2020-1
Put the idiot in a straight-jacket and let's be done with this insanity.
Our system is clearly failing when it has to deal with someone like Trump.
And not that this tells us anything the intelligent people didn't already know, but it's the best article I've seen so far on Soleimani, and what he was involved in (and the nuances). And, of course, why what Trump did changes nothing (except to make the world a more dangerous place for Americans).
.
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2020/01/ ... 25611.html
Admired and reviled: How Soleimani was seen in the Middle East
Experts say killing of Soleimani, a 'strategist' but 'unpopular' among many, will not affect how Quds Force functions.
One important (but not at all surprising) point from the article:
Aman who is a nonresident senior fellow at the Atlantic Council in Washington pointed out that Soleimani was "unpopular" among the liberals and civil-rights activists because of his role in the crackdown against protesters demanding political and economic reforms in the past decades.
"However, his killing has elevated his status in Iran and rallied the Iranian public behind the government, empowering hardliners and weakening civil society," Aman added.
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2020/01/ ... 42589.html
Activists and the Washington chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR-WA) said immigration authorities detained and questioned at least 60 Iranians and Iranian-Americans over the weekend at the Peace Arch Border Crossing in Blaine, Washington. The watchdog group said some were held and questioned for at least 11 hours....
CAIR said one woman, identified as a 24-year-old American medical student named Crystal, was detained for 10 hours with her family before being released.
Crystal's family reached out to the Iranian-American writer and community organiser Hoda Katebi, who then took the matter to CAIR-WA.
Katebi said by the time she was contacted by Crystal's family, they were at the facility for five hours. "Other people were already there for eight to nine hours," she said....
CBP denies it. Of course. They've denied a lot of things, lately, that turned out to be true.
Speaking of denials, apparently Pompeo was trying to deny that Trump wanted to bomb cultural sites. Only to have Trump later confirm that he definitely wants to do that. It must be hard to be a government official these days. The minute you try to deny that your president is an idiot or a criminal, he turns around and does it again.
And I'm not sure what to make of this "we're leaving Iraq; no we're not." Either the media jumped the gun or Trump and the Pentagon are in chaos. If was one of the major networks competing for viewers, I'd be inclined to the "media goofed" theory. But Reuters, who first broke the report, isn't usually given to unsubstantiated scoops, so I'm not so sure. And Trump does have a habit of throwing fits and blowing up reasonable decisions.
https://www.nytimes.com/reuters/2020/01 ... rawal.html
The United States has no plans to pull American troops out of Iraq, Defense Secretary Mark Esper said on Monday, following reports by Reuters and other media of a U.S. military letter informing Iraq officials about the repositioning of troops in preparation to leave the country....
Poorly worded, implies withdrawal. That's not what's happening," U.S. Army General Mark Milley, chairman of the military's Joint Chiefs of Staff, said, stressing there was no withdrawal being planned.
The authenticity of the letter, which was addressed to the Iraqi defense ministry's Combined Joint Operations Baghdad and signed by a U.S. general, had been confirmed to Reuters by an Iraqi military source.
Esper added the United States was still committed to countering Islamic State in Iraq, alongside America's allies and partners.
Several helicopters could be heard flying over Baghdad on Monday night. It was not immediately clear if this was a related development. The letter said coalition forces would be using helicopters to evacuate. ...
"Sir, in deference to the sovereignty of the Republic of Iraq, and as requested by the Iraqi Parliament and the Prime Minister, CJTF-OIR will be repositioning forces over the course of the coming days and weeks to prepare for onward movement," the letter stated.
It was signed by U.S. Marine Corps Brigadier General William Seely III, commanding general of the U.S.-led military coalition against Islamic State....
For some reason, the Pentagon is/was also claiming the letter was an unsigned draft.
https://thehill.com/policy/defense/4770 ... aving-iraq
“That letter is a draft, it was a mistake, it was unsigned, it should not have been released,” Milley told reporters in an off-camera briefing. “Poorly worded, implies withdrawal. That’s not what’s happening.”
It makes me suspicious they're covering for a Dear Leader tantrum.
Also, the Pentagon's Chief of Staff quit this morning. The official word was that this was long-planned and unrelated to the crisis. I took that at face value at first but now I'm starting to wonder.
https://thehill.com/policy/internationa ... at-visa-to
President Trump’s administration denied Iran’s foreign minister a visa to attend a United Nations Security Council meeting as tensions between the U.S. and Iran increase, Foreign Policy reported Monday.
Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif was reportedly denied access to the U.S. to address the Security Council at a Thursday meeting, three diplomatic sources told Foreign Policy.
The visa denial was in violation of the 1947 headquarters agreement mandating the U.S. allow foreign officials into the country to conduct U.N. business, according to the publication...
Secretary of State Mike Pompeo has limited access to the U.S. by Iranian officials, including Zarif, to prevent their ability to bring their message to the U.S. public....
An interesting thing in an analysis at Asia Times. I've seen this mentioned elsewhere but didn't know the origins was the parliamentary session in Iraq where they passed a resolution telling the U.S. to leave. :
https://www.asiatimes.com/2020/01/artic ... s-oil-war/
The bombshell facts were delivered by caretaker Iraqi Prime Minister Adil Abdul-Mahdi, during an extraordinary, historic parliamentary session in Baghdad on Sunday.
Maj. Gen. Qasem Soleimani had flown into Baghdad on a normal carrier flight, carrying a diplomatic passport. He had been sent by Tehran to deliver, in person, a reply to a message from Riyadh on de-escalation across the Middle East. Those negotiations had been requested by the Trump administration.
So Baghdad was officially mediating between Tehran and Riyadh, at the behest of Trump. And Soleimani was a messenger. Adil Abdul-Mahdi was supposed to meet Soleimani at 8:30 am, Baghdad time, last Friday. But a few hours before the appointed time, Soleimani died as the object of a targeted assassination at Baghdad airport....
Oh, and UNESCO reminded Dear Leader that the US signed treaties not to commit war crimes by deliberately targeting cultural sites in retaliation. Though I doubt he cares - he and Netanyahu withdrew the U.S. and Israel from UNESCO last year. Apparently, they made the mistake of recognizing Palestine in 2011 and criticizing Israel's occupations.
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2020/01/ ... 16546.html
Edited to add some links and new information and Monday's news on the Iran/Iraq/Trump situation.