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Welcome to Groundhog Day: Endless War Edition.


Muda69

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https://reason.com/2020/01/02/military-intellectual-complex-expects-more-war-in-2020/

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The foreign policy experts have seen the shadow of American empire, and so more war is on the way. Welcome to Groundhog Day: Endless War Edition.

In an annual survey conducted by the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR), foreign policy experts are asked to rank 30 potential conflicts that could could require American military action in the new year. This year, the brave men and women of the foreign policy establishment say only two of those 30 conflicts have a "low likelihood" of occurring.

"Perhaps as an indication of rising concern about the state of the world, respondents rated more threats as likely to require a U.S. military response for 2020 than in any other Preventive Priorities Survey (PPS) from the last eleven years," explained Paul B. Stares, director of the CFR's Center for Preventative Action.

Indeed, protesters stormed the U.S. embassy in Baghdad during the final hours of 2019, protesting American airstrikes against an Iranian-backed militia group operating in what's left of Iraq. In response, President Donald Trump deployed 750 additional American troops to Baghdad and is reportedly considering sending another 4,000 troops to the Middle East.

All of this could be a prelude to war with Iran. Both Trump and his former national security advisor, John Bolton, have pinned all of the blame for this week's Baghdad protests on Iran, though there are plenty of reasons for Iraqis to be angry with America's continued presence in their country.

The potential for conflict with Iran stands out in the CFR survey as well. "Only one conflict was ranked as having a high impact on the United States: an armed confrontation between Iran and the United States or one of its allies," the think tank reports.

Alongside the potential war with Iran, the group lists 12 other conflicts that are "identified as top priorities for the United States next year." Calling them "top priorities" kind of gives away the game, no?

Those other "top priorities" include a major terrorist attack on the United States or a close ally, a crisis on the Korean peninsula, a maritime conflict with China in the South China Sea, and increased Russian aggression into Ukraine.

Also on the list: "Increasing political instability in Iraq exacerbated by underlying sectarian tensions and worsening economic conditions." Keep in mind, this is from a survey published by the "Center for Preventative Action." If only there was something the U.S. could have done to prevent Iraq's collapse into turmoil, the special forces of American foreign policy-making tell us.

Recall, too, that the CFR's Middle East director in 2002 backed what she said was a "strategically sound" plan to invade Iraq in the first place.

Still, 2020 does look like it could be a particularly fraught year for America's foreign policy. Iraq is still a mess. The most realistic outcome in Afghanistan is that Washington will eventually turn the country over to the Taliban—the group we've spent 19 years fighting. And despite two decades of failed interventions, there will always be esteemed people calling for America to shed more blood and treasure over conflicts that have little to do with keeping Americans safe. The CFR survey certainly makes that clear.

The wild card in all this is Donald Trump. Though he has so far avoided outright war with Iran, the president has also failed to follow through on his ruminations about ending America's long-term engagements in the Middle East and bringing the troops home. As he gears up to run for re-election, it's not difficult to imagine the foreign policy establishment whispering in his ear that foreign wars can be good for his domestic political prospects.

Believing them would be a mistake. Trump got elected in 2016 in part by running against America's bipartisan foreign policy consensus—voters picked him over both a Bush and a Clinton, after all. And if his re-election campaign is going to tout "Promises Kept," he probably can't afford to launch a new war.

For that matter, the country can't afford it either. We're $23 trillion in debt.

But money spent and lives lost don't seem to matter to foreign policy experts in Washington. When you're paid to hawk hammers, everything is a potential nail.

"Until the latest of our world conflicts, the United States had no armaments industry. American makers of plowshares could, with time and as required, make swords as well. But we can no longer risk emergency improvisation of national defense. We have been compelled to create a permanent armaments industry of vast proportions. Added to this, three and a half million men and women are directly engaged in the defense establishment. We annually spend on military security alone more than the net income of all United States corporations.

Now this conjunction of an immense military establishment and a large arms industry is new in the American experience. The total influence—economic, political, even spiritual—is felt in every city, every Statehouse, every office of the Federal government. We recognize the imperative need for this development. Yet, we must not fail to comprehend its grave implications. Our toil, resources, and livelihood are all involved. So is the very structure of our society.

In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist. We must never let the weight of this combination endanger our liberties or democratic processes. We should take nothing for granted. Only an alert and knowledgeable citizenry can compel the proper meshing of the huge industrial and military machinery of defense with our peaceful methods and goals, so that security and liberty may prosper together."  - Dwight D. Eisenhower,  January 17, 1961

 

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Without Evidence of 'Imminent' Attack on Americans, the White House's Justification for Killing Iranian General Seems Hollow: https://reason.com/2020/01/04/absent-evidence-of-imminent-attack-on-americans-white-houses-justification-for-killing-iranian-general-collapses/

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The White House claims that this week's assassination of a top Iranian general, Qasem Soleimani, was necessary to prevent an imminent attack against Americans in Iraq and around the wider Middle East.

Soleimani "was actively plotting in the region to take actions, the big action as he described it, that would have put dozens if not hundreds of American lives at risk," Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said Friday. "We know it was imminent."

But 48 hours after the drone attack that claimed Soleimani's life, that narrative is starting to unravel amid reports that Trump took the unprecedented step of killing a foreign leader based on thin evidence of a threat and with an eye towards domestic politics. Indeed, the administration has so far provided little evidence that killing Soleimani has made Americans objectively safer—while the strike has clearly worsened the status quo by raising the likelihood of Iranian reprisals and the prospect for open war.

Citing two unnamed U.S. intelligence officials who have been briefed on the Soleimani assassination, Rukmini Callimachi, the New York Times' top correspondent covering ISIS and the War on Terror, reports that "evidence suggesting there was to be an imminent attack on American targets is 'razor thin'" and that the Trump administration made an "illogical leap" in deciding to kill Soleimani.

6. One official described the planning for the strike as chaotic. The official says that following the attack on an Iraqi base which killed an American contractor circa Dec. 27, Trump was presented a menu of options for how to retaliate. Killing Suleimani was the "far out option"

— Rukmini Callimachi (@rcallimachi) January 4, 2020

Why would Trump opt for a "far out" plan like assassinating a foreign official—an act of war, make no mistake about it—when other presidents have passed on the opportunity to do so?

It could be simply Trump being Trump. The president wrote on Twitter that Soleimani "should have been taken out many years ago." And Vice President Mike Pence expanded on that idea in a thread posted to Twitter on Friday in which he laid out a long history of Soleimani's involvement in everything from the 9/11 plot to various attacks conducted by Iranian-backed militia since America invaded Iraq.

There's no doubt that Soleimani has blood on his hands and that he worked to make America's ill-conceived occupation of Iraq even more of a disaster than it already was. It's highly likely that he was still doing that when he was killed on Thursday. But there's a big gap between saying that Soleimani was killed for his track record going back years or decades versus saying—as the White House and State Department have officially stated—that he was killed to prevent some impending, immediate threat.

And this distinction matters. It matters as a philosophical or moral concern regarding how America will continue exercising its global police powers. Is the standard for assassinating foreign officials now as murky and minimal as proclaiming them to be "bad guys?"

More importantly, it should matter in a very practical way to anyone who wants to soberly assess whether the White House did the right thing in droning Soleimani this week. The attack has ratcheted up tensions, caused the State Department to warn Americans to leave Iraq immediately (even if that means fleeing across the desert into another unfriendly country), and resulted in the Pentagon ordering thousands more Americans into harm's way. The onus is on the White House to prove that the alternative—not killing Soleimani—would have been worse.

But it doesn't seem like that was the calculus that actually drove the decision to kill Soleimani at all. The Washington Post reports that Trump was "motivated to act by what he felt was negative coverage after his 2019 decision to call off the airstrike after Iran downed the U.S. surveillance drone." (For what it's worth, I praised Trump when he called off that 2019 airstrike, a decision that likely saved dozens of lives and may have averted war.)

Taken together, the reporting from the Post and the Times paint a picture of Trump making a crucial decision that could put lives at stake and further destabilize the Middle East because he wanted the media to portray him as a tough guy. Rather than facing down an immediate threat, it seems like the White House has created a much more dangerous situation because it retaliated against Soleimani for any number of prior offenses, including the attacks at the U.S. embassy in Baghdad last week.

That's not the official story, of course, because as terrifying as "we assassinated a foreign official just because we wanted to, risk of war be damned" might be, "we assassinated a foreign official on a whim so the president would look like the tough guy portrayed in MAGA memes" sounds even worse.

 

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Trump Wants to Target Iranian Cultural Sites, Says His Tweets Shall Serve as Notice to Congress: https://reason.com/2020/01/06/trump-wants-to-target-iranian-cultural-sites-says-his-tweets-shall-serve-as-notice-to-congress/

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Should Iran retaliate for an American drone killing commander Qassem Soleimani last Friday, the U.S. will start targeting Iranian "cultural sites," said President Donald Trump. "Iran has been nothing but problems for many years," the president tweeted on January 4.

"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."

When asked about this comment, Trump again expressed an intent to go after cultural sites, saying: "They're allowed to kill our people. They're allowed to torture and maim our people. They're allowed to use roadside bombs and blow up our people. And we're not allowed to touch their cultural site? It doesn't work that way."

Breaking:

Boris Johnson has warned Donald Trump against mounting strikes against cultural targets in Iran

His official spokesman said their destruction is prohibited under the terms of the Hague convention, of which the US is a signatory

— Steven Swinford (@Steven_Swinford) January 6, 2020

Destruction of cultural heritage sites and artifacts is opposed by the U.N. Security Council. The council—of which the U.S. is a permanent member—in 2015 condemned "the destruction of cultural heritage in Iraq and Syria … whether such destruction is incidental or deliberate, including targeted destruction of religious sites and objects."

And condemning destruction of cultural sites and objects goes much further back than that. As the Los Angeles Times points out, the Hague Convention of 1907 said "all necessary steps must be taken" to spare "buildings dedicated to religion, art, science, or charitable purposes, historic monuments, hospitals, and places where the sick and wounded are collected."

And the Geneva Convention states that "any acts of hostility directed against the historic monuments, works of art or places of worship which constitute the cultural or spiritual heritage of peoples."

Acts such as these are considered by many to be a war crime, and a lot of U.S. media has been condemning them as such, as have some Democratic politicians. "Targeting civilians and cultural sites is what terrorists do. It's a war crime," tweeted Sen. Chris Murphy (D–Conn.).

This is a war crime.

Threatening to target and kill innocent families, women and children - which is what you're doing by targeting cultural sites - does not make you a "tough guy."

It does not make you "strategic."
It makes you a monster. https://t.co/IjkNO8BD07

— Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (@AOC) January 5, 2020

"The President of the United States is threatening to commit war crimes on Twitter," said Rep. Ilhan Omar (D–Minn.).

so committing war crimes is a matter that we're now openly debating, the sort of thing that has "critics" and which government officials can support or oppose https://t.co/GL96HW4Fzj

— Taniel (@Taniel) January 6, 2020

Trump also announced over the weekend that his tweets shall serve as official notice to Congress of his intent to engage in military action against Iran.

"These Media Posts will serve as notification to the United States Congress that should Iran strike any U.S. person or target, the United States will quickly & fully strike back, & perhaps in a disproportionate manner," Trump tweeted on Sunday evening.

Rep. Justin Amash (I–Mich.) says all that needs to be said on this one:

This Constitution of the United States of America will serve as notification to the president that should he order nondefensive strikes without congressional approval, he will be in violation of the law. Such legal notice was provided in 1789 but is given here again nevertheless. pic.twitter.com/ZzTDRbuDqf

— Justin Amash (@justinamash) January 6, 2020

But for the record, here's how the House Foreign Affairs Committee responded:

This Media Post will serve as a reminder that war powers reside in the Congress under the United States Constitution. And that you should read the War Powers Act. And that you're not a dictator. https://t.co/VTroMegWv0

 

— House Foreign Affairs Committee (@HouseForeign) January 5, 2020

Quippy principles from Democratic leaders ring hollow, however, when party members in Congress have repeatedly voted against measures to rein in presidential war powers or require more congressional oversight.

Trump's dangerous Twitter tantrums come as Iranian people have been pouring out in mourning over Soleimani, ("for now, Iran is united—in anger at the United States," says The New York Times) and the Iraqi parliament has voted the U.S. military out.

Owing to that last bit, Trump has started threatening Iraq again.

"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," the president said.

Meanwhile, it hasn't taken long for the administration's justification for murdering Soleimani to start unraveling. Trump and company initially insisted that Soleimani's death was necessary because he posed an "imminent" threat to American citizens and was planning an upcoming attack that would cost hundreds of U.S. lives. But a range of administration officials suggest that Trump's political image was the only thing under imminent threat. The option of attacking Soleimani had been floating around as a potential (but not optimal) plan for months.

....

Trump the Dictator.

 

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He is obviously letting the powers in Iran know that he/intelligence knows the militias/army in Iran actually use certain sites as hostages......much like many other terrorists that like to hide weapons and troops in hospitals, mosques and near other population centers.....at least 52 of them.....IMHO....

It's easy to call this guy a general, a government figure, whatever, but lest we forget he was first and foremost a terrorist......"was" being the operative word.....

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Why I Don’t Trust Trump on Iran: https://mises.org/power-market/why-i-don’t-trust-trump-iran

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President Trump and his Secretary of State Mike Pompeo told us the US had to assassinate Maj. Gen. Qassim Soleimani last week because he was planning “Imminent attacks” on US citizens. I don’t believe them.

Why not? Because Trump and the neocons – like Pompeo – have been lying about Iran for the past three years in an effort to whip up enough support for a US attack. From the phony justification to get out of the Iran nuclear deal, to blaming Yemen on Iran, to blaming Iran for an attack on Saudi oil facilities, the US Administration has fed us a steady stream of lies for three years because they are obsessed with Iran.

And before Trump’s obsession with attacking Iran, the past four US Administrations lied ceaselessly to bring about wars on Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria, Libya, Serbia, Somalia, and the list goes on.

At some point, when we’ve been lied to constantly and consistently for decades about a “threat” that we must “take out” with a military attack, there comes a time where we must assume they are lying until they provide rock solid, irrefutable proof. Thus far they have provided nothing. So I don’t believe them.

President Trump has warned that his administration has already targeted 52 sites important to Iran and Iranian culture and the US will attack them if Iran retaliates for the assassination of Gen. Soleimani. Because Iran has no capacity to attack the United States, Iran’s retaliation if it comes will likely come against US troops or US government officials stationed or visiting the Middle East. I have a very easy solution for President Trump that will save the lives of American servicemembers and other US officials: just come home. There is absolutely no reason for US troops to be stationed throughout the Middle East to face increased risk of death for nothing.

In our Ron Paul Liberty Report program last week we observed that the US attack on a senior Iranian military officer on Iraqi soil – over the objection of the Iraq government – would serve to finally unite the Iraqi factions against the United States. And so it has: on Sunday the Iraqi parliament voted to expel US troops from Iraqi soil. It may have been a non-binding resolution, but there is no mistaking the sentiment. US troops are not wanted and they are increasingly in danger. So why not listen to the Iraqi parliament?

Bring our troops home, close the US Embassy in Baghdad – a symbol of our aggression - and let the people of the Middle East solve their own problems. Maintain a strong defense to protect the United States, but end this neocon pipe-dream of ruling the world from the barrel of a gun. It does not work. It makes us poorer and more vulnerable to attack. It makes the elites of Washington rich while leaving working and middle class America with the bill. It engenders hatred and a desire for revenge among those who have fallen victim to US interventionist foreign policy. And it results in millions of innocents being killed overseas.

There is no benefit to the United States to trying to run the world. Such a foreign policy brings only bankruptcy – moral and financial. Tell Congress and the Administration that for America’s sake we demand the return of US troops from the Middle East!

I have contacted my elected representative in the U.S. Congress and urged him to demand the return of US troops from the Middle East.  

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Because Iran has no capacity to attack the United States, Iran’s retaliation if it comes will likely come against US troops or US government officials stationed or visiting the Middle East.

Iran wants the US citizenry to BELIEVE  it can attack the US.  IMHO you are ignoring or forgetting the constant stream of proxy wars with Iran for the past 50 years that the previous administrations have allowed to fester for reasons know only to them.  This President is tired of this position and has done what past administrations have promised to do but never delivered.  Don't forget, this military leader (General)  has already been the proven leader in many successful shots at the US in the region the latest being the Iraqi embassy.  By taking out the primary leader(s) of this proxy effort (cutting off the head of the snake) he is telling the Iranians to come at us (if you can) while knowing they can only be smaller attacks  which could be countered - and retaliation within Iran might begin to tell a different story of the citizenry still inside Iran.  FYI - Iran isn't freedom.  Those "protesters" in Iran you see on TV are there because they were ordered to be there or else.......

I can understand your skepticism considering the US's (past administrations) history with Iran, but I don't share it......

 

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1 hour ago, swordfish said:

IMHO you are ignoring or forgetting the constant stream of proxy wars with Iran for the past 50 years that the previous administrations have allowed to fester for reasons know only to them.  This President is tired of this position and has done what past administrations have promised to do but never delivered. 

And why has the U.S. engaged in these proxy war in Iran over the decades?  What is their purpose?  If it used to be oil then frankly that ship has sailed.  The United State of America has been the world's largest producer of oil since 2018:  https://www.eia.gov/tools/faqs/faq.php?id=709&t=6

So Mr. Trump's solution to these 'festering' proxy wars is to assassinate certain Iranian officials then follow that up with a  'real' war?

  

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3 hours ago, Muda69 said:

And why has the U.S. engaged in these proxy war in Iran over the decades?  What is their purpose?  If it used to be oil then frankly that ship has sailed.  The United State of America has been the world's largest producer of oil since 2018:  https://www.eia.gov/tools/faqs/faq.php?id=709&t=6

So Mr. Trump's solution to these 'festering' proxy wars is to assassinate certain Iranian officials then follow that up with a  'real' war?

  

Well we could always just cede Israel, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia and Pakistan to them I guess......and FTR - that  group of "Iranian Officials" were terrorists.....

Look I get your point - "Why are we even there"?   Well we are, and Iran wants us to leave just leaving the door open to all of the oil in that region.  You thought Sadaam and his delusions of taking over Saudi Arabia was bad - the Mullahs would be waaaayyyy worse.......

IMHO

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22 minutes ago, swordfish said:

Look I get your point - "Why are we even there"?   Well we are, and Iran wants us to leave just leaving the door open to all of the oil in that region.  You thought Sadaam and his delusions of taking over Saudi Arabia was bad - the Mullahs would be waaaayyyy worse.......

IMHO

"Well we are" is no answer and you know it.   Why can't the likes of  Israel, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia and Pakistan defend themselves?   Pakistan has nuclear weapons,  isn't that a sufficient enough deterrent?

 

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7 hours ago, BARRYOSAMA said:

The so called "deep state" agrees with Trump (supposedly) and we must fall in line like good sheep

The military-industrial complex run the federal government, not the people.  Every president since Eisenhower has had to fall in line.

 

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Don't Believe Mike Pence's Spin About Iran and 9/11: https://reason.com/2020/01/06/dont-believe-mike-pence-about-iran-and-9-11/

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....

These days, Pence is vice president; and these days, whether or not the broadcast networks are helping you, it's easier to use social media to peddle pro-war propaganda. And that's exactly what Pence did this weekend, dusting off the Iraq playbook to argue that an American airstrike that killed Iranian general Qasem Soleimani was totally justified because 9/11.

Soleimani was plotting imminent attacks on American diplomats and military personnel. The world is a safer place today because Soleimani is gone.

— Mike Pence (@Mike_Pence) January 3, 2020

 

There is no good reason to believe this is true. (And that goes as well for his follow-up claim about Soleimani plotting "imminent attacks"—more on that here.)

The most obvious problem with Pence's claim is that 19 terrorists carried out the 9/11 attacks, not 12. We'll be charitable and assume that was a typo. The 9/11 Commission established that between eight and 10 of the 9/11 hijackers traveled through Iran to get to Al Qaeda training facilities in neighboring Afghanistan. That is, presumably, the straw that Pence is grasping for here.

But the report does not link Soleimani or anyone else in the Iranian regime to the plot. In fact, Soleimani's name is never mentioned in the commission's 1,200-page final report.

Here's what the report does say about Iran's involvement—or lack thereof:

We have found no evidence that Iran or Hezbollah was aware of the planning for what later became the 9/11 attack. At the time of their travel through Iran, the Al Qaeda operatives themselves were probably not aware of the specific details of their future operation.

The 9/11 hijackers—like Al Qaeda frontman Osama bin Laden—were mostly Saudi nationals. Saudi Arabia and Iran are arch rivals, and much of the post-9/11 chaos in the Middle East is due to those two regional powers jockeying for leverage against one another. Iran, run by hard-line Shiite Muslims, is unlikely to forge an alliance with Al Qaeda, a Sunni group with ties to Saudi Arabia. Indeed, after the attacks Iran actively helped the U.S. round-up members of Al Qaeda, including bin Laden's son.

Writing at National Review, David Harsanyi argues that Pence's interpretation of the facts surrounding 9/11 is "mostly right" because Iran has backed other terrorist groups, including Hamas, run by Sunni Muslims. But Harsanyi has to concede that there is "no hard evidence that Soleimani himself was involved" in 9/11, and he admits that the "commission could unearth no evidence proving that the Iranians knew what the 9/11 team was planning (which doesn't mean they did not)."

Mostly right? No. These arguments do not support Pence's expansive claims, and they certainly shouldn't convince anyone to go to war. If anything, that kind of Bush-era connect-the-dots-to-9/11 logic should make Americans more skeptical of the administration's case for war with Iran, because it is exactly the same playbook—sometimes even using the exact same players—that led the country into the Iraq quagmire.

Needless to say, the fact that Soleimani wasn't involved in plotting 9/11 does not absolve him from a history of plotting attacks that did kill and maim hundreds of Americans, among others. But the question we should be asking is whether killing him keeps Americans safer. By escalating the threat of war, it does not do that at all.

Meanwhile, most of those deadly attacks were only possible because the targets were Americans in Iraq—and those Americans were in Iraq, at least in part, because Mike Pence was wrong about whether to go to war nearly two decades ago. He's wrong again now.

Do we really want another military quagmire, this time in Iran, where trillions of dollars and thousands of lives will be wasted?

 

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Everyone take a deep breath, war is not imminent. 

One of the players in the destabilization of the region is dead. The Iranians put on a show that didn't amount to much in the dessert, so they get to save face, as promised they struck back at the evil west. The next news cycle will come around soon enough and all this will be forgotten as the media delves into the next Trump scandal du jour. 

 

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35 minutes ago, Impartial_Observer said:

Everyone take a deep breath, war is not imminent. 

One of the players in the destabilization of the region is dead. The Iranians put on a show that didn't amount to much in the dessert, so they get to save face, as promised they struck back at the evil west. The next news cycle will come around soon enough and all this will be forgotten as the media delves into the next Trump scandal du jour. 

 

Probably true.  There is more advertising money for the MSM in the 2020 POTUS election and the associated impeachment trial.

 

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If Trump Decides to Start a Nuclear War, No One Can (Legally) Stop Him: https://mises.org/wire/if-trump-decides-start-nuclear-war-no-one-can-legally-stop-him

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In the days of the 2016 presidential campaign, Donald Trump's opponents began to suggest he was too mentally unstable to be president. Specifically, it was said he couldn't be trusted with the presidency's most dangerous and unchecked power: the power to unilaterally launch a nuclear war.

In late October 2016, for example, the Clinton administration launched ads featuring the now-grown-up actress from the infamous "Daisy" ads implying Barry Goldwater would start a nuclear war if elected. Then, shortly after Trump was elected, some in Congress began exploring ways to limit the president's nuclear-strike power.

Not surprisingly, these efforts were short lived. As one might expect, The military establishment clutched its pearls at the notion the president's war making power ought to be limited in any way. As one former Dept. of Defense bureaucrat put it : "I think if we were to change the decision-making process in some way because of a distrust of this President, I think that would be an unfortunate precedent."

The idea that Donald Trump is especially unstable or unfit to be in charge of military hardware has yet to be actually demonstrated. Contrary to claims that Trump is trigger happy, Trump is, in fact, the first president since Ronald Regan to not launch any new large scale invasions or bombing campaigns. Whereas Clinton, Obama, and both Bushes all launched new invasions and major bombing initiatives (i.e., Clinton's war against Serbia, Obama's Libya invasion) Trump has tended to merely continue existing policies.

Moreover, last week's targeted bombing of an Iranian general and an Iraqi militia leader was a continuation of policies put in place by the Obama administration. Trump administration policies have signaled no sizable departure from existing US policies in the region.

Yes, these policies are immoral, imprudent, and in violation of international law. But the fact is Trump's policies are no more immoral or illegal that what has been the case under his post-Cold War predecessors.

Nonetheless, Trump's bombastic style and his apparent emotional instability — whether real or imagined — are an important reminder that US presidents do indeed have the ability to launch civilization-ending nuclear wars without any veto, check, or due process of any kind.

In a 2008 interview with Fox News, Dick Cheney correctly stated:

The president of the United States now for fifty years is followed at all times, twenty-four hours a day, by a military aide carrying a football [i.e., a suitcase] that contains the nuclear codes that he would use and be authorized to use in the event of a nuclear attack on the United States. He could launch a kind of devastating attack the world's never seen. He doesn't have to check with anybody. He doesn't have to call Congress. He doesn't have to check with the courts.

In other words, the only thing that stands between a president and his launching of nuclear missiles is his own moral compass. Anyone who isn't hopelessly naïve about politicians and political institutions will find this deeply disturbing.

But why has there been no significant effort to develop some sort of check or veto to this process? Part of this lies in the fact the US military establishment maintains a posture very much in favor of erring on the side of aggression rather than restraint. In the early days of nuclear-armed Cold War, there were essentially no safeguards in place. A man claiming to be the president, if he had access to the right people, could theoretically call for a nuclear strike, and there was no set way of remotely verifying his identity.

...

According to some critics of the Pentagon, however, the military was committed to making it easy to launch the missiles. The Air Force has even been accused of using "00000000" as a code that could enable the launch of a nuclear missile. According to Foreign Policy :

Bruce Blair, a nuclear security expert and former launch officer , says no. Blair, now a scholar and author at Princeton University, first raised the idea in a piece published in 2004 . He accused the Air Force of circumventing President John F. Kennedy’s 1962 order to install extra security codes to safeguard against accidental or unauthorized launch by putting them in place, but making them painfully simple to the missile launch officers who manned underground bunkers. Doing so, Blair said, effectively eliminated the codes’ usefulness.

Blair contends this easy-code protocol persisted for at least a decade, including the period when he was a launch officer.

For it's part, the Air Force denies using the specific code of "00000000." Nonetheless, the pro-launch posture of Pentagon has long been observable. As noted by Jeffrey Lewis at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies:

"Bruce is correct about the major historical narrative at stake – the United States Air Force, particularly Strategic Air Command, generally resisted the introduction of technical safeguards out of concerns that such measures might make it more difficult to use the weapons in the event of a conflict. ... Like many other practices of the period… the Air Force’s emphasis on readiness at the expense of safety at that time seems, admittedly with the benefit of hindsight, unwise in the extreme."

Other potential sources of human error or sabotage have surfaced over the years as well.

Military personnel close to president Clinton have claimed he misplaced the so-called "biscuit," the card on which nuclear launch codes are printed. Presidents have often carried them in a coat pocket. But they can be misplaced. According to one of the men who carried the football:

"[Clinton] thought he just placed them upstairs," Patterson recalled. "We called upstairs, we started a search around the White House for the codes, and he finally confessed that he in fact misplaced them. He couldn't recall when he had last seen them."

Other similar cases reputedly occurred when President Carter "left his biscuit in a suit that got sent to the dry cleaners."

One case that has been confirmed, however, is when Ronald Reagan's codes were left discarded and unattended following his attempted assassination:

During the chaos that followed the shooting, the military aide was separated from the president, and did not accompany him to the George Washington University hospital. In the moments before Reagan was wheeled into the operating theater, he was stripped of his clothes and other possessions. The Biscuit was later found abandoned, unceremoniously dumped in a hospital plastic bag.

While mere loss of the biscuit does not trigger any sort of launch, it is difficult to predict how access to the codes could be abused by someone else in a chaotic wartime situation. Scholars have suggested several potential problems with verification and authorization.

...

The fact of the matter is there is no way to confirm a president has consulted any facts on the necessity of nuclear war, or that the president is in his (or her) right mind when ordering a nuclear strike.

Efforts to portray Donald Trump as insane have forced some media figures and politicians to admit this serious problem. But Trump won't be president forever, and it is naïve in the extreme to assume this problem goes away when Trump's successor is sworn in.

A very interesting, and very troubling, insight/history of the power of nuclear Armageddon the POTUS holds.

 

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Rand Paul, Mike Lee Are 'Empowering the Enemy' By Wanting To Debate War With Iran, Says Lindsey Graham: https://reason.com/2020/01/08/rand-paul-mike-lee-are-empowering-the-enemy-by-wanting-to-debate-war-with-iran-says-lindsey-graham/

Quote

Sen. Lindsey Graham (R–S.C.) on Wednesday strongly criticized Sens. Mike Lee (R–Utah) and Rand Paul (R–Ky.) after his two Republican colleagues argued that Congress should exercise its role as a lawful check on President Donald Trump's military action against Iran.

"Whether you mean to or not, you're empowering the enemy," Graham told reporters, referring to Lee and Paul's suggestion that the Senate formally discuss the constitutionality and necessity of Trump's decision to assassinate Iranian Gen. Qassem Soleimani. "We live in the real world here," Graham added.

The South Carolina senator made his comments immediately following a press conference where Lee railed against what he called "the worst briefing [he's] seen on a military issue." During the meeting, Defense Department officials reportedly told members of Congress to fall in line with the Trump administration's course of action.

"What we were told over and over again was that…we can't have division, we can't have dissension within our ranks, within our government, or else it sends the wrong signal to the Iranians," Lee said. "I think that's completely wrong."

Sen. Tim Kaine (D–Va.) today introduced a resolution that orders "the President to remove United States Armed Forces from hostilities against the Islamic Republic of Iran or any part of its government or military, by not later than the date that is 30 days after the date of the enactment of this joint resolution unless explicitly authorized by a declaration of war or specific authorization for use of military force." House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D–Calif.) introduced a similar measure in the House that will receive a full vote on Thursday.

Lee further said that when lawmakers presented Pentagon officials at the briefing with different potential war scenarios, the officials consistently demurred at going through Congress. "They were asked a number of hypotheticals about situations in which they might have to appropriately come and ask for authorization from Congress," he said. "Not once did they say yes."

After Lee's press conference, Graham sought to dismiss the Utah senator's concerns about the administration's intransigence by saying that Soleimani was a bad guy "by any definition of the law," and that "if we hadn't done something, and Americans had been killed, all of these people would be tarred and feathered."

While no elected member of either party has disputed that Soleimani was responsible for deadly violence across the Middle East, there is bipartisan concern that American military aggression against Iran will further destabilize the area and possibly the wider world. The administration has provided no evidence that Soleimani was plotting an attack on Americans, as Graham and Trump have claimed. New York Times reporter Rukmini Callimachi, who covers ISIS and the War on Terror, says the idea that he posed an imminent threat was an "illogical leap."

5. But as one source put it a) + b) + c) is hardly evidence of an imminent attack on American interests that could kill hundreds, as the White House has since claimed. The official describes the reading of the intelligence as an illogical leap.

— Rukmini Callimachi (@rcallimachi) January 4, 2020

 

History suggests that House and Senate votes on the Iran question will fall largely along party lines. Whether or not politicians express hawkish or dovish proclivities often depends on whoever is in the White House, but Lee and Paul's anti-war dispositions provide a relatively rare exception to that rule. It was actually Graham who explained it best: "You know, they're libertarians."

Of course the pentagon officials don't listen to Congress because they basically control the executive branch of the federal government.  They are not going to cede back to Congress the powers that legislative body has repeatedly given to the POTUS over the last few decades.

 

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hhttps://www.cbsnews.com/live-updates/plane-crash-us-officials-confident-iran-shot-down-passenger-jet-bound-for-ukraine-today-2020-01-09-live-stream-updates/

U.S. officials are confident Iran shot down a Ukrainian jetliner in the hours after the Iranian missile attack on U.S. targets earlier this week, CBS News has learned. The Ukrainian International Airlines plane crashed Wednesday soon after takeoff from Tehran's airport, killing all 176 people on board.

U.S. intelligence picked up signals of a radar being turned on, sources told CBS News. U.S. satellites also detected two surface-to-air missile launches, which happened shortly before the plane exploded, CBS News was told.

Federal officials were briefed on the intelligence Thursday, CBS News transportation Kris Van Cleave reports. A source who was in the briefing said it appears missile components were found near the crash site.

The plane was believed to have been mistakenly targeted.

Anyone think Iran is going to accept responsibility?

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1 hour ago, swordfish said:

 

U.S. intelligence picked up signals of a radar being turned on, sources told CBS News.

Anyone think Iran is going to accept responsibility?

We can't trust US Intelligence.  I need confirmation from Russia before I will believe it.

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