Patient_Leech
Perfect Organism
Originally posted by Surtur
I missed the part of your article that concretely proves they are lying here. Copy and paste it for me.
You're never going to be able to touch, feel, taste, etc concrete proof, Surt. You know that. But it's fishy as fu#k and super convenient with Trump in the middle of an impeachment. Funny no one's talking about impeachment anymore. And as usual the most transparent administration ever is being super secretive.
But I'll humor you. Though you should read the whole article.
The Trump administration felt compelled to justify its extraordinary measure by invoking extraordinary circumstances. Officially, the president did not order the assassination of a foreign official to exact retribution for past attacks on U.S. soldiers, or deter Iranian aggression in the region in some generalized sense. Rather, according to the White House, the United States dropped several missiles on the Iranian commander because doing so was the only possible means of averting an “imminent” attack on Americans abroad.This “imminent” attack would have transpired in a matter of “days” and/or “weeks,” and killed “dozens if not hundreds” of Americans, along with some unspecified number of Europeans. The intelligence informing these assessments is “clear and unambiguous” (but the supposedly sovereign public of our great democracy is not allowed to see it).
There is, of course, precedence for Republican administrations launching Middle Eastern wars on the basis of lies. But historically, such administrations have felt compelled to keep up the pretense of democratic accountability. George W. Bush & Co. put in the effort to fabricate a logically coherent casus belli for Iraq and manufacture intelligence backing up their mendacious claims. The Trump White House, by contrast, has not even done voters the courtesy of pretending to believe that they are entitled to a facially plausible narrative — or evidence of any kind — before their government launches wars in their name.
Senate Democrats have asked the administration to declassify the rationale for the Soleimani killing that it had provided to Congress. “It is critical that national security matters of such import be shared with the American people in a timely manner,” Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer and ranking member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee Bob Menendez wrote in a letter. “An entirely classified notification is simply not appropriate in a democratic society, and there appears to be no legitimate justification for classifying this notification.”
There does, however, appear to be an illegitimate one. Contrary to the claims made by Joint Chiefs of Staff chairman Mark A. Milley, the classified intelligence supporting the administration’s case is neither “clear” nor “unambiguous,” according to just about every official and lawmaker who’s been made privy to it. From the Washington Post:
Lawmakers left classified briefings with U.S. intelligence officials on Friday saying they heard nothing to suggest that the threat posed by the proxy forces guided by Soleimani had changed substantially in recent months.
… Some defense officials said Pompeo’s claims of an imminent and direct threat were overstated, and they would prefer that he make the case based on the killing of the American contractor and previous Iranian provocations.