Tag: Trump-created Iran crisis

Senior White House officials faced ‘a mad dash to reconcile intense intra-administration tensions’ due to Trump’s interference in Soleimani killing

AlterNet logoAccording to a report at the Daily Beast, plans to go after Iranian military leader Qassem Soleimani were months in the making and, after Donald Trump ordered his assassination, Pentagon and State Department officials were forced to scuttle their plans to handle the fallout because of how the president reacted in the aftermath.

The reports states, “The ensuing days became a mad dash to reconcile the intense intra-administration tensions over what the intelligence actually said about Iranian plots, and how best to sell their case to the American public. At the very top was a president who stewed and complained to staff about how the killing he’d just ordered might negatively affect his re-election prospects and ensnare him in a quagmire in the Middle East of his own creation.”

Plans for Soleimani were in the works for months, the report notes, and after the president chose the option of killing the popular Iranian leader and put it in motion not everyone was on the same page about how to sell it to the public. Continue reading.

Trump Lied About Injuries Inflicted On US Troops By Iran Retaliation

Several U.S. service members received concussions and were treated for their injuries after Iran fired missiles at the Ain al-Assad military base in Iraq earlier this month, U.S. Central Command announced Thursday evening.

The disclosure of the injuries runs counter to Donald Trump’s previous claim that “no Americans were harmed” in the strike.

“While no U.S. service members were killed in the Jan. 8 Iranian attack … several were treated for concussion symptoms from the blast and are still being assessed,” Central Command spokesman Capt. Bill Urban said in a statement. Continue reading.

ICYMI: Rep. Phillips Pens Bipartisan Washington Post Column


“WE DIFFER IN OUR POLITICS. WE AGREE ON CONGRESS’S POWER TO DECLARE WAR.”

WASHINGTON, DC – Today, Rep. Dean Phillips (MN-03) teamed up with Reps. Justin Amash (I-MI), Ken Buck (R-CO), Jared Golden (D-ME), Scott Perry (R-PA), Chip Roy (R-TX) and Abigail Spanberger (D-VA) to call on their colleagues to put aside partisanship and safeguard the constitutional duty of Congress to declare war by reconsidering the 2001 and 2002 authorizations for use of military force (AUMFs). In a joint opinion piece published in the Washington Post, they write:

We differ in our politics. We agree on Congress’s power to declare war.

Reps. Justin Amash (I-MI), Ken Buck (R-CO), Jared Golden (D-ME), Scott Perry (R-PA), Dean Phillips (D-MN), Chip Roy (R-TX), Abigail Spanberger (D-VA), Washington Post, January 16, 2020

We are members of Congress whose political ideologies and priorities run the gamut, but we are united in our determination to safeguard the constitutional duty of Congress to declare war and to ensure that the American people have their voices heard. This duty is essential to providing the men and women of our armed forces the support and clarity of mission they deserve. Continue reading “ICYMI: Rep. Phillips Pens Bipartisan Washington Post Column”

Trump Authorized Strike On Iran General In May 2019

Seven months before a U.S. drone strike killed Iranian Gen. Qassem Soleimani, Donald Trump authorized lethal action against him. The revelation continues to erode the Trump administration’s claims that Soleimani posed an “imminent threat” to the United States.

NBC News reported on Monday that Trump authored a presidential directive in June that allowed for a strike on the Iranian general.

A senior administration official told NBC that it was “some time ago” that aides put killing Soleimani in front of Trump as part of the options available in response to Iranian hostility. According to NBC, Trump was urged by John Bolton to make the strike in June after Iran shot down a U.S. drone. Continue reading.

‘Four embassies’: The anatomy of Trump’s unfounded claim about Iran

Washington Post logoThe theory was born last Thursday in the Roosevelt Room of the White House, where President Trump stood before men in hard hats and orange construction vests for an environmental announcement and offered a fresh rationale for his controversial order to kill a top Iranian general.

“They were looking to blow up our embassy,” Trump said, referring to the heavily secured Baghdad facility that had become a magnet for protesters.

Later that night, at a raucous campaign rally in Ohio, Trump added to his story. The Iranians, he claimed, were planning to attack not only the U.S. Embassy in Iraq but also an undisclosed number of embassies in other countries. Continue reading.

Trump says ‘it doesn’t really matter’ if Iranian general posed an imminent threat

Washington Post logoPresident Trump added to the controversy over his administration’s justification for the killing of an Iranian general, saying Monday that “it doesn’t really matter” whether it was in response to an imminent threat to the United States.

In a tweet, Trump criticized Democrats for trying to determine whether Iranian attacks the administration has said were planned by Maj. Gen. Qasem Soleimani against U.S. targets were imminent.

“It doesn’t really matter because of his horrible past,” Trump wrote. The administration has held Soleimani, as head of Iran’s Quds Force, responsible for orchestrating Iran’s use of proxy forces in terrorist attacks throughout the Middle East, and the deaths of hundreds of U.S. soldiers over the years, long before the threat it has said justified the Jan. 3 U.S. drone strike that killed him. Continue reading.

Trump says it doesn’t matter if Soleimani posed an imminent threat

The Hill logoPresident Trump on Monday said it didn’t matter if Iranian Gen. Qassem Soleimani posed an imminent threat to the United States because of his “horrible past.”

Trump also asserted that his national security team agreed on the imminent threat posed by Soleimani that led to the decision to kill him. He made this assertion despite remarks from Defense Secretary Mark Esper on Sunday that undercut Trump’s claim that the Iranian general was planning to target four American embassies before a U.S. drone strike killed him in Baghdad on Jan. 3.

“The Fake News Media and their Democrat Partners are working hard to determine whether or not the future attack by terrorist Soleimani was ‘eminent’ or not, & was my team in agreement,” Trump tweeted Monday morning, incorrectly spelling imminent. Continue reading.

‘I am livid’: Canadian CEO blasts ‘narcissist in Washington’ after an employee lost his family in plane crash caused by Iranian missile

Washington Post logoNot all observers faulted only Iran after the nation admitted to firing a missile that downed a Ukrainian commercial airliner in Tehran and killed 176 peoplelast week. On Sunday, the chief executive of a Canadian food giant took to the company’s corporate Twitter account to seemingly blame President Trump for the deaths of Canadian citizens aboard the plane, including the wife and child of a Maple Leaf Foods employee, after Trump inflamed Iran to retaliate to the U.S. drone strike that killed Maj. Gen. Qasem Soleimani earlier this month.

“A [Maple Leaf Foods] colleague of mine lost his wife and family this week to a needless, irresponsible series of events in Iran,” Maple Leaf Foods CEO Michael McCain tweeted. “U.S. government leaders unconstrained by checks/balances, concocted an ill-conceived plan to divert focus from political woes.”

McCain did not name Trump, but blamed the downing of the airplane on “a narcissist in Washington” that had escalated tensions between the United States and Iran to a “feverish pitch” in the days after the president ordered the drone strike in Baghdad. McCain said he was “very angry” after one of his employees lost his wife and 11-year-old son in the crash. Continue reading.

New Poll Shows Most Americans Disapprove Trump’s Iran Actions

Following on the heels of a USAToday/Ipsos poll that came out January 9th, ABC News/Ipsos has another, newer poll up regarding Americans attitudes towards Donald Trump’s recent military actions against Iran that, viewed in a historical context, is rather extraordinary.

American forces acting at the direction of Donald Trump assassinated Iranian General Qasem Soleimani on January 3.   As many Americans will forever recall, as they sat aghast in front of their television sets, Iran “retaliated” on January 8 by launching ballistic missiles at two US bases in Iraq. It was not until the next day that reporting suggested that Iran deliberately “missed” US troops with a view towards avoiding a wider war; this has been confirmed now by the Iraqis who revealed they were informed in advance of the attacks and immediately advised the U.S. As a result, U.S. troops were moved to secure bunkers at the bases hours before the Iranian missiles were actually launched.

The initial January 9 poll was unique because it revealed that, even in the face of a hostile nation launching missiles at us (the sample taken for that poll included some respondents who would have witnessed Iran’s “retaliation,” but not the news that they Iran deliberately acted to avoid inflicting casualties on the U.S.),  a bare plurality of Americans approved of Trump’s military action. Again, as noted here, this poll was taken after the Administration had trotted out Mike Pompeo to assure Americans that Qasem Soleimani was one of the most evil human beings ever to walk the earth, and that he had planned innumerable “imminent” terror attacks that this air strike had heroically foiled in the nick of time. Continue reading.

The evolution of a Trump lie: How we got from ‘imminent attack’ to ‘four embassies’ in 9 fact-free steps

AlterNet logoSometimes deception generates a “tangled web,” other times just a hilarious mess. But Donald Trump’s war-triggering assassination and post-drone strike rationalizations show two things: one is how clumsily Trump shifts his lies from day to day, the other is how Mike Pompeo and Fox News hurry along in Trump’s wake, trying to paper over irrational statements with a thin veneer of claims that all fall apart on even the most cursory examination.

This isn’t even how a little lie spawned a big one. This lie started big and it stayed that way. The only thing that really grew was how obviously Pompeo and others were willing to throw away any pretense of integrity to make it seem that Trump had a passing grasp on the facts. By week’s end, America got to see how Pompeo’s I-can’t-help-smirking-when-I-lie grin had grown larger than the Joker’s.

1) Donald Trump was not supposed to assassinate Qassem Soleimani. Military planners presented it to Trump as the “far out” option under the silly assumption he would take a more reasoned approach.

2) What those planners weren’t considering wasn’t just Trump’s disdain for reason, but his need to make a big gesture toward Iran to secure the support of Republican senators in his upcoming impeachment trial. Continue reading.