So, Iran, huh?

[Limoncello]

[JoeP]

You can't prove I'm wrong.

[Kamilah Hauptmann]

Ukrainian plane was 'unintentionally' shot down, Iran says - CBC News

[JoeP]

Indeed. Iran admits 'unintentionally' shooting down Ukrainian airliner | World news | The Guardian

Apparently it was related after all, to my complete and utter astonishment.

[specious_reasons]

Most of the news media I consume has not really fallen for the war hawk's "immediate attack" claims like this:

Mr. Esper in a CNN interview Tuesday said the death of Gen. Soleimani prevented an attack that was likely in “a matter of days, certainly no more than weeks.” Later, at the Pentagon, he said such an attack was more likely days away.

My question is, and I haven't seen anyone asking: Why do they think killing Gen. Soleimani was going to prevent an immediate attack? He was a General in a functioning military. If there was an attack that was being planned and organized by the Iranian military, Soleimani had aides and lieutenants and an organization behind him implementing those plans.

The manager of my organization abruptly left last year. It disrupted almost none of the work my team was doing. If Soleimani was 1/2 the organizer of a mid-level manager, any immediate attack would not be prevented from killing one man.

[chunksmediocrites]

Originally Posted by ChuckF

hey, remember when Killary was NEOCON HAWK who wanted war with Iran, because and gentle dovish Trump, the meek isolationist, is all bluster and would definitely not go looking for new conflicts in the Middle East? Those were really, really good takes, and definitely not completely fucking retarded, and we should listen to those folks again because they have real important stuff to say and are real super smart about that stuff and really when it comes down to it who ever could have said who was the lesser of two evils amirite.

I think it’s fine to be critical of Hillary Clinton’s foreign policy record, especially when one looks at her actions in Honduras, Haiti, Syria, Libya, Palestine, Israel, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Iran- specifically MEK status- Yemen, and Egypt. In those countries there are bodies she gets partial credit for, dictators she avows support for, regimes she helps oust, democratic elections she seeks to nullify because the wrong ones won; wars she votes for, military support she approves, neoliberal globalization schemes she underwrites.

Criticizing Hillary Clinton’s foreign policy or noting Trump’s non-interventionist stance during his campaign IMO was a legit take. I’m unclear on how to factor this... apple-cart upsetter? in with- short list- the people who didn’t vote in the 2016 election, active voters who stayed home, sexism, Comey’s email pronouncements Re: Hillary right before election day, the failure of the strategy of the Hillary centrist campaign, nor for the Obama-Trump voters as things Hillarystans should get in their feelings about. But it’s not my business to tell y’all how to feel about it.

Trump has spent most of the first three years in office firing and replacing staff and making mercurial demands that can be ignored or deflected much of the time. His body count is still under Obama’s and under Hillary’s. For sure I worry as any other semi-rational adult that Trump could totally start WWIII and/or a nuclear holocaust. Trump has given the military free reign and the airstrikes and bombings in the countries where we’ve been doing that for decades have intensified under Trump. It’s not great. It is also- other than breaking the Iran deal- not substantively different than Obama and either Clinton. It is just mask off. It is a more honest version of what we are as a country. I don’t want to go “back” to the status quo before Trump.

Let’s also not forget foreign policy under Obama with Hillary as Secretary of State. From December 2016:
The Final Obama Doctrine? Racking Up the Body Count
Obama officials have repeatedly expressed a commitment to killing large numbers of ISIS fighters. Will Trump take it even further?

Assassinating Leaders

To wage exterminatory warfare against the Islamic State, the Obama administration has employed a number of specific measures. Taking advantage of the extraordinary air power of the U.S. military, the Obama administration has waged an unprecedented air campaign to kill its targets.
The Obama administration has been especially effective at killing IS’s senior leaders. Since its first began its military campaign against IS in August 2014, the Obama administration has killed hundreds of senior leaders, according to U.S. officials. “It’s a short career as a leader in ISIL,” U.S. Colonel Steve Warren acknowledged during a press briefing in March 2016. “You’re not going to last very long. You won’t make it to retirement.” The main reason, Warren specified, is that coalition forces are constantly killing IS leaders as well as their replacements. “We’ll kill them,” Warren stated. In some cases, “we’ve gone three deep in a position.”
Moreover, U.S. officials insist that they must continue with their assassination program. As new leaders rise to fill the ranks, U.S. officials keep targeting them for elimination. “We must keep systematically eliminating every key leader we find, and we must deny them safe haven wherever they may seek it,” Secretary of Defense Ashton Carter has insisted.
As they have grown increasingly effective at killing IS leaders, administration officials have also grown increasingly confident in their operations. For example, McGurk recently declared that the U.S. government would soon succeed in killing the Islamic State’s “caliph,” Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi. “It’s a matter of time until we eliminate him,” McGurk stated. “His days are very much numbered.”

Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi mentioned above was assassinated in the infamous raid last October where Trump got to watch the "brave hero dog" and US murder squad in action on his jumbotron.

Obama who approved extrajudicial kill lists including US citizens and drone strikes on weddings, double-tap drone strikes on first responders, on funerals, who expanded presidential powers once again, had a really reprehensible foreign policy; who used the Espionage Act to prosecute whistleblowers and journalists more than any previous administration, who deported 5 million people- admittedly an improvement on Bush's 10 mil and Clinton's 12 mil. It is understandable to pine for the safer choices but fuck Obama and fuck both Clintons. And fuck the CIA and military war planners who have so far mostly succeeded in seeding the next generation of militant anti-west groups around the world and been a source of propaganda for recruiters with the extrajudicial killings, Guantanamo Bay, Black Site prisons and torture. Gina Haspel, head of the CIA, and a former black-site prison operator, not only has her job because Trump supported her but also because Obama refused to prosecute the torturers in the Bush Administration.

Note here that I voted for Hillary Clinton, the lesser of evils, for president in the general election in 2016.

Keep in mind all that killing IS command structure and forces is what Suleimani and the militias were doing mostly in Iraq, same as what the military under Obama was focused on in the quoted article. Just to be clear also that we are a bloodthirsty empire killing peeps on the reg, Democrat or Republican- we had drones flying over eight countries before Trump came into office, had troops in war zones we created before Obama or Trump came into office.

[Kamilah Hauptmann]

Journalists quit Iranian state broadcaster over crash cover-up | World news | The Guardian

I'm told it was the Chernobyl coverups that really crushed any remaining faith Warsaw Pact people had in their governments. Make of that what you will.