News US-Iran crisis intensifies after general assassinated

[EnglishALT]

Wait, wait, are you actually admitting Bin Laden is dead? That Obama did indeed, kill him, something that is often doubted by his detractors?

I should mention, btw, that Bin Laden was being pursued for both national and international criminal charges, and even so, Pakistan was very angry at us after the mission for violating their sovereignty.

I really do not want to talk about the Bin Laden raid, He is dead, Obama killed him, it was the right call, Pakistan was mad but who cares. All of that has nothing to do with the current topic.

 

[gimmepie]

Why are we all forgetting that the reason there's so much anti-US sentiment in the Middle-East is because past American governments have invaded over false pretences for the sake of controlling oil supplies and forcing their values onto other cultures? I'm not going to condone the burning down of the US Embassy, but let's stop pretending that the US are the good guys here. There are no good guys in these wars - although I guess a debate could be made for Iraq since they largely just seem to be in a really unfortunate location.

Also, I don't Bin Laden is a good comparison. He was wanted internationally for well known, confirmed crimes. I'm not okay with the violation of sovereignty, but the strike itself I'm okay with. The attempted assassinations of Fidel Castro would be a better example, although there's the issue of the absence of a third party.

 

[EnglishALT]

Why are we all forgetting that the reason there's so much anti-US sentiment in the Middle-East is because past American governments have invaded over false pretences for the sake of controlling oil supplies and forcing their values onto other cultures? I'm not going to condone the burning down of the US Embassy, but let's stop pretending that the US are the good guys here. There are no good guys in these wars - although I guess a debate could be made for Iraq since they largely just seem to be in a really unfortunate location.

That argues that before Iraq, everything was fine in the Middle East in terms of anti-US sentiment. Before Iraq, there was the US presence in Saudi Arabia, or the support of Israel, or any number of things that was used to attack the "Great Satan"

Also, I don't Bin Laden is a good comparison. He was wanted internationally for well known, confirmed crimes. I'm not okay with the violation of sovereignty, but the strike itself I'm okay with. The attempted assassinations of Fidel Castro would be a better example, although there's the issue of the absence of a third party.

It may not be the best comparison, but it was a leader of an organization who had engaged in terrorist acts, and was seen as a clear and present danger to make future attacks against the US. Castro to my knowledge on the other hand largely kept to himself outside the Cuban Missile Crisis.

 

[gimmepie]

That argues that before Iraq, everything was fine in the Middle East in terms of anti-US sentiment. Before Iraq, there was the US presence in Saudi Arabia, or the support of Israel, or any number of things that was used to attack the "Great Satan"

Can't imagine why anyone would be mad about supporting Israel... oh wait, Palestine exists. Anti-American sentiment just about anywhere there's anti-American sentiment generally comes from the US thinking it's the centre of the universe and sticking their nose in wherever they please, doing whatever they please. Not that the US is the only place guilty of this, but we're talking about the US.

It may not be the best comparison, but it was a leader of an organization who had engaged in terrorist acts, and was seen as a clear and present danger to make future attacks against the US. Castro to my knowledge on the other hand largely kept to himself outside the Cuban Missile Crisis.

He was a foreign leader on foreign soil with no real evidence of wrongdoing against the US. That's the similarity.
If this were a case in a court of law and you tried to prosecute with the flimsy conjectural evidence the US government seems to have, you would be laughed out the building. I'd like to think that maybe the standard for ordering an assassination on foreign soil should be higher than that.

This entire situation is a mess and a large part of that is because of the US leadership making stereotypical US leadership decisions.

 

[EnglishALT]

He was a foreign leader on foreign soil with no real evidence of wrongdoing against the US. That's the similarity.
If this were a case in a court of law and you tried to prosecute with the flimsy conjectural evidence the US government seems to have, you would be laughed out the building. I'd like to think that maybe the standard for ordering an assassination on foreign soil should be higher than that.

This entire situation is a mess and a large part of that is because of the US leadership making stereotypical US leadership decisions.

No real evidence?

Do you deny he met with militia leaders in October instructing them to step up attacks, as well as provided them with weapons from Iran?

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-...ani-to-attack-us-forces-in-iraq-idUSKBN1Z301Z

Do you deny that as leader of Iran's military he helped finance and direct thousands of terror plots in Iraq and Syria?

I mean this all is fact, his trail of crimes and bodies has been well known and documented across three US Administrations and across the world.

Edit: Or you know we could just ask those that attacked the embassy who was in command, they were quite clear.

"Outside the embassy, the protesters flung rocks at the gate while others carried banners with President Trump's face crossed out and chanted, "No, no, America! … No, no, Trump!"

They scrawled "No to America!" and "Soleimani is my commander" on the embassy walls — referring to Iran's pointman for Iraq, Revolutionary Guards commander Maj. Gen. Qasem Soleimani.

Qais al-Khazali, leader of the Iranian-backed Asaib Ahl al-Haq militia, and several other senior militia leaders were among the protesters."

https://nypost.com/2019/12/31/hundreds-of-iraqis-attempt-to-storm-us-embassy-in-baghdad/

 

[gimmepie]

Snip

Last I checked random things screamed by protesters aren't the best source of evidence. Nor are meetings between political factions that could be about anything. There's a reason that site doesn't even give the same "American intelligence" line about that - it's conjecture. If it's not strong enough for a court, and this isn't, it shouldn't be strong enough to authorise assassination.

As for Iran having influence in Iraq, that's none of the US' business.

 

[EnglishALT]

Last I checked random things screamed by protesters aren't the best source of evidence. Nor are meetings between political factions that could be about anything. There's a reason that site doesn't even give the same "American intelligence" line about that - it's conjecture. If it's not strong enough for a court, and this isn't, it shouldn't be strong enough to authorise assassination.

As for Iran having influence in Iraq, that's none of the US' business.

So let me get this straight Soleimani meets with these forces in October, supplies them with weapons, these forces then attack the embassy, spray painting "Soleimani is my commander" on the walls, and then days later he returns to meet with the commander of the very same forces and there is no evidence?

In court not only would you lay out the facts but you would have experts come in and testify on them to show that Soleimani was engaging in behavior that he has done for over a decade when it comes to commanding foreign militias for Iran's interest.

 

[Her]

It's a testament to the longevity of Rupert Murdoch's stranglehold on Western media that far-right propagandists, or centrist apologists, don't even have to be paid to do their job, they don't have to know how they've been manipulated - it's almost automated at this point, allowing a true illusion of self-determination with spreading hatred they believe to be wholly original and solely defined by them. With such a successful decades-long dehumanisation of the Middle East, any and all actions undertaken to further destabilise the region is universally seen as a good thing by those people; the Forever War of recent decades need not end if there are brown people still left to shake their geopolitical fist at, if there's always a new enemy to justify the ransacking of government coffers for private interests. There will always be a justification.

 

[Maedar]

Iran's actual heads of state say: "We are complying with America's nuclear deal."
Republicans say: "Don't believe them, they're a bunch of liars!"

A mob of Iranian citizens say: ""No, no, America! … No, no, Trump!"
Republicans say: "They are deadly serious! This is a threat to America!"

Angry Mob screaming, "Death to the Great American Satan!"
Republicans shout: "TERRORISTS!"

But Just-as-Angry Mob shouting, "LOCK HER UP! LOCK HER UP!"
And Republicans say, "Aw, they don't mean it."

Sounds kinda dumb, doesn't it?


On a related note, Trump has just threatened war crimes against Iran.

In his midnight tweetstorm, he said, I quote:

"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!"

i should point out, the destruction of cultural heritage sites is a war crime under the United Nations, in a rule targeting not only ISIS and Al Qaeda but all combatants on any side:

The UN Security Council unanimously adopted a resolution Friday condemning the unlawful destruction of cultural heritage and warning the Islamic State extremist group, al-Qaeda and other combatants that such attacks may constitute war crimes.

The resolution approved by the UN's most powerful body expands previous measures which were limited to the illicit trafficking in looted cultural items to fund terrorism, and focused on Iraq and Syria where Islamic State extremists have destroyed ancient sites including Palmyra.

The newly adopted measure targets not only IS, al-Qaeda and its affiliates but all parties to conflicts.

This is no idle rule. A radical Islamist militant named Ahmed al-Faqi al-Mahdi is already doing nine years' in prison at the Hague for destruction of cultural heritage sites in Timbuktu.

To put this in terms everyone can understand, I am reminded of the famous scene in Raiders of the Lost Ark where Indiana Jones (a character Trump compared himself to at least once) points a grenade launcher at the Nazi troops carrying the Ark of the Covenant, threatening to destroy the artifact rather than let them have it. The evil archaeologist Belloq (one of film history's biggest narcissists and an overall big jerk) calls Indy's bluff, however, correctly reminding him that "we are simply passing through history. This, this *is* history." (Yeah, that's right, the villain is not only calling out the hero, he's making a valid point while doing so.)

The president of the United States is threatening Iran with cultural extinction. No matter how you spin it, that is a war crime. Threatening a war crime is also war crime. And this president must be held accountable for it, whether while in office or afterward as need be.

Edit: It doesn't look like Iraq is as happy with Trump as he assumed they'd be:

https://www.aol.com/article/news/20...nt-calls-for-expulsion-of-us-troops/23893552/

 

[EnglishALT]

Iran has announced on state tv that they are officially pulling out of the nuclear deal, it was largely a sham at this point anyway, but now they have made it official.

 

[LDSman]

Many Iranian Americans support the death of the terrorist general.
One such protest.
https://www.google.com/amp/s/losang...ian-americans-celebrate-death-of-general/amp/

The US doesn't support the ICC and mostly doesn't care what the UN says.

 

[Kanzler]

If Soleimani was as talented as everyone says he was, then I wonder if his assassination might impair Iran's ability to work through its proxies in the Middle East. If he had mysteriously died by poison then you've probably saved some American lives down the line and get away with it, but destroying him in a brazen airstrike only serves to give Iran an obvious reason to retaliate and makes things more chaotic for all the other actors not named the US or Iran. I think the scariest aspect of the confrontation as it currently stands is Israel or Saudi Arabia. They might receive retaliation or be provoked into attacking Iran or its proxies, at which point you can't help but think it'll spiral into open conflict and the US would have to respond in kind.

 

[Kolar™]

US did a good job, Iran is a country who promotes terrorism, human trafficking etc etc. They deserved it.

 

[VisionofMilotic]

Well lets break this down, because time would have been a factor Trump would have had to have gone to the Gang of 8 for authorization, a full deliberation of Congress would have been useless as not only would it be sharing classified material openly, but time being the issue, and Congress moving at a snail's pace, would not be able to accomplish authorization in the required time. The intelligence Gang of 8 consists of.

United States House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence:
Adam Schiff (D-CA-28), Chair
Devin Nunes (R-CA-22), Ranking Member

United States Senate Select Committee on Intelligence:
Richard Burr (R-NC), Chair
Mark Warner (D-VA), Vice Chair

Leadership in the United States House of Representatives:
Nancy Pelosi (D-CA-12), Speaker of the House
Kevin McCarthy (R-CA-23), Minority Leader

Leadership in the United States Senate:
Mitch McConnell (R-KY), Majority Leader
Chuck Schumer (D-NY), Minority Leader

4 Republicans, 4 Democrats, David Nunes, Richard Burr, Kevin McCarthy, and Mitch McConnell have shown support for the attack on twitter, that leaves the 4 Democrats being the only ones who could have opposed this. 4 Democrats, opposing the killing of the leader of Kata'lb Hizballah, who had just attacked the embassy, and a man responsible for the killings of 500 to 600 Americans.

Yeah, I am sorry but there is no way that those 4 top Democrats are going to take responsibility, in an election year, to not stop these two people if presented the opportunity. Especially since such a meeting between the general and Kata'lb Hizballah, could very well result in another embassy attack or deaths of US personnel.

It would be Benghazi 2.0 right before the 2020 election.

I am willing to acknowledge that the courage of our sold out democratic lawmakers hangs by a thread, and that the war machine-driven foreign policy we have receives bipartisan support. That being said, the prospect of war with Iran-- which Trump is begging for by assassinating two senior military leaders in the Baghdad airport is such a special level of lunatic that it has even the neoliberals like Pelosi scrambling to place some form of check and balance on Trump right now, resurrecting the war powers resolution to limit his authority with regard to Iran.

https://www.cnbc.com/2020/01/06/house-to-vote-on-limiting-trumps-military-powers-regarding-iran.html

A full deliberation of congress and sharing the material would not be pointless if there is no clear evidence for the claim of imminent danger the decision to drone this guy was based on. This precedure could have exposed lies from the White House, and then they might not have gotten to carry out the assasination they wanted. The burden of proof is on the person making the claim, and the Trump administration has yet to demonstrate a specific and imminent threat to us, only a generalized fear.

In his CNN interview Friday when Pompeo was asked about the specific nature of the threats Pompeo talked out of both sides of his mouth.

"I can't talk too much about the nature of the threats. But the American people should know that the President's decision to remove Soleimani from the battlefield saved American lives. No doubt about that, actively plotting in the region to put thousands of Americans at risk. We know he's behind dozens of attacks throughout region."

He does not say how he knows this. Then we were treated to this word salad.

"I am not going to tolerate killing of Americans on Dec 27th-- Americans killed in Iraq. Then we watched intelligence flow in to show Soleimani travels throughout region and work to put Americans at risk. Time to take this action, plot to deter further aggression from Qassem Soleimani and iranian regime, as well as de-escalate situation."

This reads like a free verse poem. The Trump administration has to show that there was an imminent threat in order to carry out an assassination. We're supposed just to sit down and shut up and fall in line? Why should we just trust this guy whose been pushing us to attack Iran since 2014? We don't need any impirical evidence to evaluate? We should just kill someone primarily because of their reputation as our opponent, and on the word of Robert Hook, Mike Pompeo and Donald Trump that the White House really has some good intelligence that they are not showing us and a catastrophe will strike if we don't do these killings now. That is a psychological form of black mail to manipulate the public. Yeah sorry, the very government that has lied us into wars in the middle East like Libya, Syria, Afghan and Iraq needs to answer questions before receiving a license to kill in Iran too.

This could be false intelligence, which is why it has to be shared objectively now or another half a million people may end up dead for no reason just like they did in Iraq. The first responsibility of congress is to check and balance the executive branch, nowhere is this more important than initiating wars, which is what Trump is trying to do.

The more information begins to surface the more horrifying this assasination is. The prime minister of Iraq is saying that Soleimani was in the airport on a peace mission trying to improve relations with Saudi Arabia. The guy we just blew away to Kingdom Come could just as easily have been carrying a diplomatic response as hatching a plot. If it is the former then it is our leader this time who just made the world more unsafe.

https://thegrayzone.com/2020/01/06/soleimani-peace-mission-assassinated-trump-lie-imminent-attacks/

That is great, but lets not bury what kind of mass murderer this man was.

He planned a strike on US soil, that would have killed US civilians, along with the Saudi Ambassador in 2011.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/hist...i-ambassador-dc-case-reads-like-spy-thriller/

He instructed his militia leaders in Iraq to step up their attacks on U.S. targets in Iraq using weapons provided by Iran.

Two weeks before he moved rockets that could target helicopters into Iraq.

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-...ani-to-attack-us-forces-in-iraq-idUSKBN1Z301Z

He is responsible for the building and shipping of IED and other weapons into Iraq to destabilize the country and fuel a civil war that targeted US troops between 2005 to 2007 which claimed the lives of over 600 US troops and injured thousands more.

He also allegedly had direct planning, financing, and directing of the 2012 terror attack against the U.S. Embassy in Benghazi.

https://nypost.com/2020/01/04/inside-the-twisted-terrible-reign-of-iranian-general-qassem-soleimani/

As for Soleimani being responsible for the deaths of hundreds of Americans, it is problematic to assasinate him on that basis since his militia was killing American troops while they were occupying Iraq--when we had unjustly invaded the region and were waging an illegal war to get oil.
I am not unsympathetic to our fallen countrymen and women. It's tragic that well-meaning American soldiers were used by the government in this way and ended up in the path of guerilla warfare from Iranian-backed militias, fighting and dying on a false pretext so that the military industrial complex could enrich itself here at home. The troops didn't deserve to die, and neither did the people we were invading. It was a no-win situation. This is why I am anti-war, because that is the horrible reality of what it looks like trying to hold a country that does not want you there. It is why I am for exhausting every diplomatic tool, no matter how much of a concession it may be to stop another Iraq. This is why I don't support shooting our opponents first and asking questions later right outside Baghdad airport. I believe it could lead to Iraq 2.0

If two nations do go to war however a distinction does ultimately need to be drawn between warfare against armed forces and saying in a vacuum that Soleiman the mass murderer killed hundreds of Americans. Those hundreds of Americans shouldn't have been sent over there. I wish all of the people were alive today. If you make war on a nation however then the troops killed trying to take control of the country for you is not the same set of circumstances as an act of terrorism against civilians like 9/11. This doesn't make the impact of loss of these American lives any less, there is nothing to prevent or our own government officials from assasination however for consequences of their role in our wars if we assassinate Soleimani on a basis as broad what he did at war. This is a slippery slope that we are using as the basis of this killing.

Most of the deaths we know for fact Soleimani is directly responsible for took place within the context of our occupation of Iraq, av decade that left half a million people dead, more displaced and wounded, homes destroyed, raided, mass arrests people tortured and detained, governments broken for nothing, all based on lies of the government telling us to kill this guy too. I think it would be more constructive and relevant to a conversation about foreign policy if we explain how his militias came to be fighting the United States, than reduce the discussion to caricatures where one party is the "monster" as you term it.

I am not going to have a conversation about Benghazi as grounds for his assination because this is a theory about something he was involved with, with words like "allegedly" and "supposedly" and "could have" peppered throughout the links you have posted, rather than something we know, and the same is so for him supposedly having a plot to attack America once that never came to fruition if this was even so. Nothing is more final than death. If you believe our government should kill him or anyone then that decision needs to be based on just the hard facts.

Peace? Peace? Are you serious?

Again I point out that this man was shipping weapons into Iraq as recently as October and telling the militias there to step up the targets and attacks.

Lets look at this "peace" we achieved under Obama with Iran, we already covered the Benghazi attacks and the planned bombing on U.S. soil.

We have the capture of US soldiers on January 12, 2016 which resulted in release of pictures of them bound, a direct violation of the Geneva convention.

https://www.lawfareblog.com/irans-photographs-navy-sailors-war-crime-or-just-outrage

Iran through its use of Hezbollah was responsible for shipping countless number of drugs into Europe and America, the money of which was used to further finance terror operations.

https://www.politico.com/interactives/2017/obama-hezbollah-drug-trafficking-investigation/

They engaged in various acts of cyber espionage targeting the state department and various other civilian targets.

https://www.nytimes.com/2015/11/25/...respionage-state-department-social-media.html

I could go on and on, but I think it is rather clear that Iran, despite the nuclear accord, was still willing to act in a non peaceful manner, in attempts to humiliate and hurt the U.S.

If you don't want to use the word peace with regard to Iran, then how about less of a mess than we have now? Instead of just feeling hurt and humiliated now there is no incentive for Iran not to enrich uranium and build weapons. The population of the country is suffering, food is unaffordable because of the crippling sanctions we slapped on them. Any moderates left will probably be swept out of office in Iran in backlash for the Soleimani assasination and replaced with hardliners. We have Sunnis and Shiites, moderates, hardliners, reformers all united in mourning now and justifiably hating America. 50 people were just killed in the chaos of stampede of the chaos of his funeral marches alone.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/worl...6c70a2-30d5-11ea-9313-6cba89b1b9fb_story.html

Iraq, which was in a precarious position technically aligned with both the U.S and Iran, now may have to go all in with Iran. Their parliament has voted to expel us out of the country for fragrantly undermining their sovereignty by killing on their soil an official of the government they invited in to help them defeat Isis, and Trump threatening Iraq with illegal sanctions now if they dare tell us to leave.

Iran promising to hit back 30 sites in retribution for this assination, and Trump going for the machine gun threatening to hit 50 in Iran, not sparing even the civilians who could die if he hits the cultural heritage sites, threatening essentially human rights violations.
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/trump-threatens-iran-attacks-52-sites-n1110511

We could also see a resurgence of Isis in the north as we just killed the guy who demolished Isis. Isis, the terrorist group that emerged out of the instability that OUR regime change wars caused, was previously being contained by Iran and the Kurds. Trump is doing his best to burn all bridges with both of them.

We're telling any Americans to flee the region for their lives right now. If this was an effort to deter aggression then Trump failed miserably.

Isis may not be the worse of our problems, Iran was doing naval exercises with Russia and China a little earlier this December.
https://www.cnn.com/2019/12/27/asia/china-russia-iran-military-drills-intl-hnk/index.html

It is not out of the realm of possibility that you could pull them into this dispute too. Neither Obama or Bush wanted to kill Soleimani because they recognized this would be such a major escalation that it would probably lead to war. That does not mean they had a positive view of him, but our personal feelings won't change that he is respected in the middle east even outside of Iran. If the US and Iran want to de-escalate they stll may not be able to because they can't control the reaction of everyone on the region. I hope that this does not happen, but these are possible geopolitical consequences that need to be considered with his death, and the question is if the threats were truly more imminent to you before you had killed. #NoWarWithIran

 

[Maedar]

Know what's amazing?

Obama: Took down Osama bin Laden, a known terrorist leader wanted internationally, and mastermind of the 9/11 attacks. Viewed by Republicans as worst president in history and a traitor.

Trump: Took down an Iranian general whom nobody even heard of with no solid evidence of terrorist activities. Viewed by Republicans as a hero and "true American".

Unbelievable.

 

[LDSman]

Trump: Took down an Iranian general whom nobody even heard of with no solid evidence of terrorist activities. Viewed by Republicans as a hero and "true American".

Unbelievable.

He's actually well-known. Not sure why you're insisting otherwise.

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/03/obituaries/qassem-soleimani-dead.html

 

[EnglishALT]

Know what's amazing?

Obama: Took down Osama bin Laden, a known terrorist leader wanted internationally, and mastermind of the 9/11 attacks. Viewed by Republicans as worst president in history and a traitor.

Trump: Took down an Iranian general whom nobody even heard of with no solid evidence of terrorist activities. Viewed by Republicans as a hero and "true American".

Unbelievable.

That honestly speaks to how pathetically partisan we as a country have become and the gulf that divides us.

It is not hard to imagine that if reversed it would be Republicans saying that Obama is trying to get a war with Iran to distract from problems at home, with Democrats saying that taking out Osama Bin Laden was unnecessarily provocative of us going into an ally Pakistan.

 

[Corrin]

I don't like that many innocent civilians were killed just to take out this one guy whom no one heard of. People lost family members, friends, mothers, fathers, people who were just at a fucking airport.

It's no lie that the US and Iran have beef ever since Trump pulled the nuclear deal but if there's no hard evidence about this guy other than he was a general? Come on. Don't risk the lives of millions for one man.

 

[EnglishALT]

I don't like that many innocent civilians were killed just to take out this one guy whom no one heard of. People lost family members, friends, mothers, fathers, people who were just at a fucking airport.

It's no lie that the US and Iran have beef ever since Trump pulled the nuclear deal but if there's no hard evidence about this guy other than he was a general? Come on. Don't risk the lives of millions for one man.

I only heard that five people died, three were terrorists, the other two I assume were security. Trump did not bomb an airport but use a targeted drone attack to take out a car at the airport.

Edit: Breaking News Iran responded by using cruise missiles and ballistic missiles to target US bases all over Iraq.

This seems like a rather limited response but may not be the only response given by Iran, however it does clearly ratchet up the tensions.

Edit Again: No deaths, and more than a few missiles missed, this could be Iran backing down, or preparing terror attacks and claim deniability.

I am willing to acknowledge that the courage of our sold out democratic lawmakers hangs by a thread, and that the war machine-driven foreign policy we have receives bipartisan support. That being said, the prospect of war with Iran-- which Trump is begging for by assassinating two senior military leaders in the Baghdad airport is such a special level of lunatic that it has even the neoliberals like Pelosi scrambling to place some form of check and balance on Trump right now, resurrecting the war powers resolution to limit his authority with regard to Iran.

https://www.cnbc.com/2020/01/06/house-to-vote-on-limiting-trumps-military-powers-regarding-iran.html

We can both realize that for so many, like Pelosi, political calculations are the most important. If there is a war ( which seems far less likely now ) then Trump owns it, he would own it even if Democrats signed off on the strike. However if he did nothing, and comes off looking weak ( as many Democrats accused him of before the strike ) and Iran attacks again, then he has a tool to bludgeon the left with.

I guess the question I have to ask is this, which do you think Pelosi believes would hurt the Democrats more, another Iraq War in which Republicans and Bush were blamed, or another Benghazi in which Democrats were blamed for failing to act.

A full deliberation of congress and sharing the material would not be pointless if there is no clear evidence for the claim of imminent danger the decision to drone this guy was based on. This precedure could have exposed lies from the White House, and then they might not have gotten to carry out the assasination they wanted. The burden of proof is on the person making the claim, and the Trump administration has yet to demonstrate a specific and imminent threat to us, only a generalized fear.

That is great, but more than likely the General was not planning to stick around Iraq while Congress deliberates his fate. If the plan was to kill him to prevent another attack, there is a limited opportunity to do that. Otherwise he retreats to Iran, and the preparations begin on the next stage of attack by Hizbollah.

In his CNN interview Friday when Pompeo was asked about the specific nature of the threats Pompeo talked out of both sides of his mouth.

"I can't talk too much about the nature of the threats. But the American people should know that the President's decision to remove Soleimani from the battlefield saved American lives. No doubt about that, actively plotting in the region to put thousands of Americans at risk. We know he's behind dozens of attacks throughout region."

He does not say how he knows this. Then we were treated to this word salad.

"I am not going to tolerate killing of Americans on Dec 27th-- Americans killed in Iraq. Then we watched intelligence flow in to show Soleimani travels throughout region and work to put Americans at risk. Time to take this action, plot to deter further aggression from Qassem Soleimani and iranian regime, as well as de-escalate situation."

This reads like a free verse poem. The Trump administration has to show that there was an imminent threat in order to carry out an assassination. We're supposed just to sit down and shut up and fall in line? Why should we just trust this guy whose been pushing us to attack Iran since 2014? We don't need any impirical evidence to evaluate? We should just kill someone primarily because of their reputation as our opponent, and on the word of Robert Hook, Mike Pompeo and Donald Trump that the White House really has some good intelligence that they are not showing us and a catastrophe will strike if we don't do these killings now. That is a psychological form of black mail to manipulate the public. Yeah sorry, the very government that has lied us into wars in the middle East like Libya, Syria, Afghan and Iraq needs to answer questions before receiving a license to kill in Iran too.

This could be false intelligence, which is why it has to be shared objectively now or another half a million people may end up dead for no reason just like they did in Iraq. The first responsibility of congress is to check and balance the executive branch, nowhere is this more important than initiating wars, which is what Trump is trying to do.

Honestly what do you expect? For Pompeo to come on and play the secret video files they have recorded, maybe secret phone conversations? Maybe he could bring up a few spies from inside the Iranian regime and have them infront of the camera?

I can understand by being frustrated by the lack of information, however lets be realistic here, the more concrete information is going to be given out to those like the Gang of 8 in Congress, because of how much risk it puts on the intelligence community to reveal where they got it.

The more information begins to surface the more horrifying this assasination is. The prime minister of Iraq is saying that Soleimani was in the airport on a peace mission trying to improve relations with Saudi Arabia. The guy we just blew away to Kingdom Come could just as easily have been carrying a diplomatic response as hatching a plot. If it is the former then it is our leader this time who just made the world more unsafe.

https://thegrayzone.com/2020/01/06/soleimani-peace-mission-assassinated-trump-lie-imminent-attacks/

So he was on a peace mission, he just so happened to be visiting a terrorist leader responsible for attacking the US Embassy on such a mission, as well as the deputy leader for Lebanon Hezbollah. For a peace mission, he sure was visiting some of the top leadership of Iran's proxies for war.

By the way, just before he arrived in Baghdad, he was in Syria, to coordinate with Iran's proxys on what to do next against the US, further strengthening the point that he came to Baghdad to plan with the proxys in Iraq.

https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/tracked-targeted-killed-qassem-soleimanis-final-hours

As for Soleimani being responsible for the deaths of hundreds of Americans, it is problematic to assasinate him on that basis since his militia was killing American troops while they were occupying Iraq--when we had unjustly invaded the region and were waging an illegal war to get oil.
I am not unsympathetic to our fallen countrymen and women. It's tragic that well-meaning American soldiers were used by the government in this way and ended up in the path of guerilla warfare from Iranian-backed militias, fighting and dying on a false pretext so that the military industrial complex could enrich itself here at home. The troops didn't deserve to die, and neither did the people we were invading. It was a no-win situation. This is why I am anti-war, because that is the horrible reality of what it looks like trying to hold a country that does not want you there. It is why I am for exhausting every diplomatic tool, no matter how much of a concession it may be to stop another Iraq. This is why I don't support shooting our opponents first and asking questions later right outside Baghdad airport. I believe it could lead to Iraq 2.0

Wait let me get this straight, you say you are anti war because Iraq was an illegal war ( It wasn't ) for oil, but in the same paragraph you seem to wave off attacks that were planned, prepared, and funded by Iran. Without Iran, there would have been no attacks! There would have been no militia, at least sizeable militia, in Iraq.

Lets also not forget that it wasn't just US servicemen that were targeted by this militia, Iran was funding and orchestrating a full on Sunni vs Shia civil war in Iraq that killed thousands upon thousands of civilians, a civil war that they continue to try and push to today. That blood is on Soleimani's hands.

If two nations do go to war however a distinction does ultimately need to be drawn between warfare against armed forces and saying in a vacuum that Soleiman the mass murderer killed hundreds of Americans. Those hundreds of Americans shouldn't have been sent over there. I wish all of the people were alive today. If you make war on a nation however then the troops killed trying to take control of the country for you is not the same set of circumstances as an act of terrorism against civilians like 9/11. This doesn't make the impact of loss of these American lives any less, there is nothing to prevent or our own government officials from assasination however for consequences of their role in our wars if we assassinate Soleimani on a basis as broad what he did at war. This is a slippery slope that we are using as the basis of this killing.

Most of the deaths we know for fact Soleimani is directly responsible for took place within the context of our occupation of Iraq, av decade that left half a million people dead, more displaced and wounded, homes destroyed, raided, mass arrests people tortured and detained, governments broken for nothing, all based on lies of the government telling us to kill this guy too. I think it would be more constructive and relevant to a conversation about foreign policy if we explain how his militias came to be fighting the United States, than reduce the discussion to caricatures where one party is the "monster" as you term it.

Last time I checked Soleimani was not an Iraqi general, he was not even an Iraqi national, he was not acting in some kind of power for Saddam's Government. He was acting on behalf of Iran's Government to hurt the U.S. and draw Iraq into a civil war in which they hoped to come out the winner by creating a puppet state in Iraq.

If you don't want to use the word peace with regard to Iran, then how about less of a mess than we have now? Instead of just feeling hurt and humiliated now there is no incentive for Iran not to enrich uranium and build weapons. The population of the country is suffering, food is unaffordable because of the crippling sanctions we slapped on them. Any moderates left will probably be swept out of office in Iran in backlash for the Soleimani assasination and replaced with hardliners. We have Sunnis and Shiites, moderates, hardliners, reformers all united in mourning now and justifiably hating America. 50 people were just killed in the chaos of stampede of the chaos of his funeral marches alone.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/worl...6c70a2-30d5-11ea-9313-6cba89b1b9fb_story.html

My response to that is what else is new? Iran has been getting around the enrichment process and building weapons in military sites, unable to be inspected by nuclear inspections for months if not years. Iran's leadership continues to kill dissidents and moderates, as we saw in the uprisings in the early 2010s.

So what has changed? Honestly the only thing that has changed is that the US took off the table the man responsible for largely orchestrating Iran's foreign policy of funding militias and engaging in terrorism.

Iraq, which was in a precarious position technically aligned with both the U.S and Iran, now may have to go all in with Iran. Their parliament has voted to expel us out of the country for fragrantly undermining their sovereignty by killing on their soil an official of the government they invited in to help them defeat Isis, and Trump threatening Iraq with illegal sanctions now if they dare tell us to leave.

The Iraq vote was largely meaningless as it did not include a timetable for leaving, it was symbolic and was abstained by half of Iraq's parliament.

Iran promising to hit back 30 sites in retribution for this assination, and Trump going for the machine gun threatening to hit 50 in Iran, not sparing even the civilians who could die if he hits the cultural heritage sites, threatening essentially human rights violations.
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/trump-threatens-iran-attacks-52-sites-n1110511

Right now it is looking like the only response was a few missiles, I would count that as a major win for the Trump administration.

We could also see a resurgence of Isis in the north as we just killed the guy who demolished Isis. Isis, the terrorist group that emerged out of the instability that OUR regime change wars caused, was previously being contained by Iran and the Kurds. Trump is doing his best to burn all bridges with both of them.

Doubtful, ISIS leadership is beyond decimated, it's fighters having fled back home, and it's funding largely dried up.

Isis may not be the worse of our problems, Iran was doing naval exercises with Russia and China a little earlier this December.
https://www.cnn.com/2019/12/27/asia/china-russia-iran-military-drills-intl-hnk/index.html

Neither will happen, China won't risk the economic disaster, especially after some of the sanctions have been lifted, and Russia does not have the capability at this point to wage a massive war across Europe.

 

[Maedar]

Right now it is looking like the only response was a few missiles, I would count that as a major win for the Trump administration.

Actually, right now, pretty much everyone sees it as his biggest mistake to date.