Multiple similar accounts have now come out over the inside the Situation Room decision-making process concerning the risky move to take out the IRGC’s Gen. Qasem Soleimani, as well as how the drone attack operation played out at the airport.
By all accounts, as Soleimani traveled to and through Baghdad airport US intelligence seized upon the “target of opportunity” and moved fast to brief President Trump, who was at Mar-a-Lago. Defense sources explained to Bloomberg that Soleimani wasn’t being monitored before it was known he was coming through Baghdad’s international airport.
Defense and intelligence officials believed the Revolutionary Guard Quds force leader was plotting attacks on Americans inside Iraq and the region — this based on an “intelligence assessment” — the contents of which haven’t been made public.
From the moment Trump was briefed on the matter it was only known to a tightly restricted group of aides within the cabinet, as even White House communications officials “were excluded from the planning,” notes Bloomberg. And further Bloomberg’s sources reveal that:
The White House opted against notifying Congress ahead of the attack out of concern for security, a person familiar with the matter said. The Department of Homeland Security, which is partially responsible for deterring potential Iranian retaliation on U.S. soil, was only notified of the Soleimani strike after the fact.
However, select “friendly” Congressional leaders were let in on the discussions, most notably South Carolina Republican and outspoken Iran hawk Sen. Lindsey Graham.
Bloomberg continues:
Inside ornate Mar-a-Lago suites commandeered as makeshift situation rooms, Trump hosted top advisers and certain friendly members of Congress on Tuesday to discuss a strike taking out the commander of Iran’s security and intelligence services.
In between rounds of golf and dinners with his family over the next 48 hours, he was updated on specific intelligence showing multiple threats to Americans from Iran in the region — and on the expected movement of Qasem Soleimani to Baghdad, where he was taken out by an American drone on Thursday.
Top advisers and military brass also sought to offer Trump a view of what the kill might mean for the region, for the United States and for his presidency.
Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, Defense Secretary Mark Esper and Gen. Mark Milley, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, had been urgently flown in from Washington to advise the president based on the new intelligence.
The ensuing debate over whether to act centered on the endless unforeseen consequences and “escalation risk” that assassinating Iran’s most influential military leader and close friend to the Ayatollah and Iranian president might entail.
“The morning after the strike, Trump abandoned plans to play a round of golf and instead spent time surveying his orbit of advisers on the kill order. He was defiant, according to some of the people he spoke with, and defensive,” Bloomberg reports. “But he also appeared to be freshly aware of the gravity of his role and the power he wields, unsure of how Iran would respond.”
During the whole affair, others who had attended holiday and New Year’s events with the president described him as “calm, cool and collected.” According to Politico, conservative radio host Howie Carr, who’d been among the first to speak to Trump at Mar-a-Lago moments after the news first broke, said “I had no idea there was anything out of the ordinary going on until I got home.”
This despite Israeli officials and media for the past two years touting that Tel Aviv has given a ‘green light’ for his assassination should the opportunity present itself.
As Politico aptly summarizes: “That calculation proved misguided in the wee hours of January 3 in Iraq, where Soleimani landed amid spiraling tensions between U.S.- and Iranian-allied factions.”
A senior defense official concluded, “He arrived at the airport and we had a target of opportunity, and based on the president’s direction, we took it.”
via zerohedge
Obama ordered Bin Laden’s end. I see no difference in the fallout, so Democrats and leftists can shut up, sit down and behave themselves.
AMEN!!!! Everybody (left and right) celebrated bin Laden’s demise. The left is so focused on hating President Trump, they would rather go to hell then agree with him.
I sense that most of our Democratic elected officials are TRAITOR’S and should be treated that way. This hatred and dividing people into social groups was a Marxist/ Lenin plan and orchestrated by Obama and his administration. The cash the last administration paid the Iran regime bought our country nothing. It made things worse. It s time to vote all of these Communists out before it is to late. Give the government back to ” We the People”.
Democrats are cowardly politicians that would rather see America falling to it’s knees to Iran instead of making them aware of the fact that if you cross the line and harm any american you will pay. Obama paid these people tons of money because he and Biden had no spine and they were afraid. Obama and Biden paid them to behave and they spent the money on funding terrorism instead of improving their citizens lives . Iran has hated us and chanted death to America for at least 40 years now so i would say that if they had any confidence that they could come out on top in an all out war against us they would have tried it by now and we would be bowing to these hate filled terrorists right here on our own soil. Trump is treating these terrorists like terrorists and if they want to be taken serious as an honest nation they need to behave . Let’s not let the fear that is in the eyes of Chuck Schumer, Adam schiff, Nancy Pelosi and the rest of the cowardly democrats be mistaken for concern for their country because it is only cowardly fear .
The Israeli’s had a good chance to take him out under Obama’s administration in 2016. When consulted on the matter, what did Obama do? Told Iran about it!
Which is exactly why the stupid traitor dems are crying about not being asked or told about it beforehand! Any one of them would have called and told them especially the leakier shifty shiff.
So General Sulemani travelled from Syria to Baghdad on a regular commercial airline and had an appointment that Fri morning with the Iraqi Prime Miniister. And US had been tracking the Gen for several months, so was not “a clear and present danger”.
But is terrible that Pres Trump cannot trust his own aides (that are part of deep state and are Obama holdovers) or to trust democrats to be kept in the loop because of their history of deliberately leaking!!!
Why Iraq is complicated…BUT MAKE NO MISTAKE. Killing Qassem Soleimani, the head of Iran’s elite Quds military force, responsible for thousands US and Iraqi citizens being killed was absolutely the right thing to do.
He was a terrorists by tactics and strategy.
Any non response to the killing of US military or citizens, its allies, must be met. No responding with equally deadly force is encouragement for these tactics and strategies to persist.
The threat of war to curtail the responses to deadly aggression and/or terrorists is a threat that history tells us must be put aside. This simple fact is, this not a conundrum.
History
The Sunni Muslims have been fighting the Shiite Muslims (Iran lead) since 1600 AD. Mesopotamia (now Iraq) was taken from Persia (Iran) by the Ottoman Turks (Sunni Muslims) in the 15th century. They controlled this area until 1914 when they were defeated in WWI . The British occupied Mesopotamia and freed it in 1932. The Sunni Muslims controlled Iraq and were at war with Iran until the US invasion following 9/11. The US allowed the majority of Iraqis (who are Shiite Muslims) to then form a government and left. Internal war has continued between the many religious factions before and since then.
ISIS which are radical Sunni Muslims took effective control of large areas of Iraq and the US intervened once again to assist the Iraqi government to defeat ISIS. A lot of this was and is push back against the Shiite controlled Iraqi government.
The Iranians must have been laughing up their sleeve as the US assisted to defeat or subdue at least ISIS, their mortal enemy) and put the Iraqi people back under their influence.
But, this is a 500 year old Gordian’s knot that has and will continue to be undone. Let alone be undone by the US.
IT IS TIME TO LEAVE IRAQ TO THEIR OWN DEVICES. Send bombers or US forces to kill when an if a threat arrives or as a strategic answer to implied threats (Nuclear or Chemical Weapons). Do the deed - get out.
See excerpt from Wikipedia below:
The Iraqi people, sometimes colloquially, Mesopotamians, or the people of Mesopotamia[1][2][3] (Arabic: العراقيون ʿIrāqiyyūn, Kurdish: گهلی عیراق Îraqîyan, Classical Syriac: ܥܡܐ ܥܝܪܩܝܐ ʿIrāqāyā) are people native to the modern country of Iraq, living either inside or outside of the country.[4]
Ancient Iraq is referred to as Mesopotamia and has throughout its history been a multiethnic and multicultural region. Historically, ancient peoples who inhabited Iraq were the Sumerians and Babylonians to the south, Akkadians in the central-south and Assyrians to the north of the country. An Arab population has been present in the country as early as the second or third century BC, about four centuries before the Islamic conquest in the seventh century. The earliest known recorded language in history is the Sumerian language, originating in southern Iraq (Sumer-Babylonia).[5] During the third millennium BC, a very intimate cultural symbiosis developed between the Sumerians of the south and the Akkadians to further north in central Mesopotamia, in which there was very widespread bilingualism of both peoples able to speak the Sumerian and Akkadian languages.[6] The Syriac language (which originated in Mesopotamia), as well as Christianity, has been present in Iraq since the first century, which was introduced by Thomas the Apostle. Christians in Iraq are one of the world’s oldest continuous communities in the world, and after Palestine/Israel, Iraq is the location of the most biblical history than any other country in the world.[7] Before the advent of Islam to Iraq, the majority of the population who inhabited Iraq followed various branches of Eastern Christianity, Judaism or indigenous ancient Mesopotamian religions. The pre-Islamic people of Iraq included people from various ethnic groups in Mesopotamia; and the majority of them spoke the Syriac language, despite not all being ethnic Syriacs, Assyrians or Christians. Syriac Christianity first emerged in Upper Mesopotamia and the Nestorian Church (Church of the East) and its successor churches were established in the major ancient Mesopotamian Greek-Persian city of Seleucia-Ctesiphon in central-southern Iraq. The first Arab kingdom outside Arabia was established in Northern Iraq in the second century and was called the Kingdom of Araba. Additionally, the Lakhmids were Arabs present in parts of central-southern Mesopotamia from the third century until the Islamic conquest. The Lakhmids were Nestorian Christians following Syriac Christianity, and were bilingual in both Syriac and Arabic, and contributed greatly to the Church of the East.[8] Iraq boasts a rich and vital contribution to Christian history, in particular Eastern and Syriac Christianity, which has been the most dominant branch of Christianity in Iraq since its establishment for over fifteen centuries, and is one of the largest in the greater Fertile Crescent region (Mesopotamia and the Levant) as a whole.[9] The Lakhmids of Mesopotamia have also played a key role in Arab history; it was in the Arab Syriac Christian capital of Al-Hirah where the alphabet of the Arabic language was standardised.[10][8] Additionally, during the Arab and Islamic Golden Age, Iraq and the capital Baghdad became the centre of the scientific world for centuries,[11] where the people of the region excelled in the development of medicine, biology, physics, chemistry, astronomy, mathematics, agriculture, economics, architecture, sociology, literature, art, poetry and philosophy, and included not only Arabs and Muslims, but also Persians, Syriacs, Christians, Nestorians, Assyrians and others from various ethnoreligious backgrounds, which formed an integral part in the cultivation of Arab civilization, of which Iraq and its cultural diversity has played a key and major role in.[11][12][13][14][15]
Following the Islamic conquest of Mesopotamia in the seventh century, a large proportion of the indigenous Syriac, Persian and other non-Arabic speaking people of Iraq (who largely practiced Eastern Christianity, Judaism or ancient Mesopotamian religions) became Muslims and were Arabized, eventually adopting the Arab identity with their religion, despite the majority of them not being ethnic Arabs.[16][17] Along with the Arabized Mesopotamian natives, the minor migrations that took place during the rule of successive Islamic dynasties, and the pre-Islamic Arabs who had lived in the country centuries before, the Arabic-speaking people of Iraq would eventually become the present-day Iraqi Arab ethnic group. Despite Arabization of a large proportion of the Mesopotamians, a Christian group of indigenous people from Mesopotamia, resisted Islamization as well as Arabization, retaining their Syriac Christian religion and language to this day. This group would become the present-day Chaldo-Assyrian peoples of Iraq, who make up the majority of Iraqi Christians. Mesopotamian Arabic developed as the dominant language in the country, and is a Syriac substrate, and also shares significant influences from ancient Mesopotamian languages of Akkadian, Sumerian and Babylonian, as well as other local and Middle Eastern languages such as Persian, Turkish and Greek.[18][19][20][21] Mesopotamian Arabic is said to be the most Syriac influenced dialect of Arabic, due to Syriac having originated in Mesopotamia, and spread throughout the Middle East (Fertile Crescent) during the Mesopotamian Neo-Assyrian period, eventually becoming the lingua franca of the entire region for centuries before the spread of the Arabic language.[22][23][24][25] Mesopotamian Arabs and Assyrians are the largest Semitic peoples of Iraq, sharing significant similarities in language between Mesopotamian Arabic and Syriac, and Kurds are the largest Iranic ethnic group, sharing similarities in language with the other Iranic peoples in the country, such as the Yazidis and Shabaks. Iraqi Turkmen are the largest Turkic ethnic group in the country.[26][27] Studies indicate that the different ethnoreligious groups of Iraq and Mesopotamia share significant similarities in genetics, and that Iraqi Mesopotamian Arabs, who make up the majority of Iraqis, are more genetically related to other non-Arab populations in the region such as Assyrians, Kurds, Iranians and Turks, than they are to Arabs of the Arabian peninsula.[16][17][28]
Iraq today remains one of the most multicultural countries in the region, with various indigenous peoples, as well as a diverse number of diasporic communities from around the world who have chosen to make Iraq their home. The population was estimated to be 40,194,216 in 2018 (residing in Iraq), and over 10 million living in the diaspora,[29] with most of the population being Mesopotamian Arab (75%), followed by Kurds (20%), Chaldo-Assyrians (10–15%) (500,000+ (in Iraq) to 2 million in total with diaspora numbers), Turkmen (3 million), Afro-Iraqis (1 million), Yazidis (500,000–900,000) and Shabaks (300,000–500,000). Other minorities include Iraqi-Armenians, Mandeans, Yarsans, Doms and Kawliya (Indian descent), Ajam (Persian descent), Circassians and Chechens (North Caucasian descent) and others. Iraqis are 64% Shia Muslim, 31% Sunni Muslim, 10–15% Christian (majority of whom are Syriacs but also Greek Orthodox and Melkite Catholic Arabs), 1.4% Yazidi, and several other indigenous faiths.[30] The most spoken languages are Mesopotamian Arabic (which is taught and spoken by all those living in Iraq), Kurdish, Syriac and Iraqi Turkmen of the Turkish language. The percentages of different ethnoreligious groups residing in Iraq vary from source to source due to the last Iraqi census having taken place over 30 years ago. A new census of Iraq is planned to take place in 2020 in which the populations of each ethnoreligious group in Iraq will be clearly defined.[31][32][33]