Qassim Suleimani
<font size="4" face="Times New Roman">disambig some new</font><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">
</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"><b>rudy got him on hit list?!</b>
</font><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Qassim Suleimani</font></span></div><div><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></span></div><div><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">=</font></span></div><div><div style="font-size: small; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">=</font></div><div style="font-size: small; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><a href="https://www.alternet.org/2020/03/as-coronavirus-pandemic-sweeps-the-globe-trump-authorizes-new-bombing-campaign-in-the-middle-east" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; color: rgb(0, 51, 153); outline: none;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000">https://www.alternet.org/2020/03/as-coronavirus-pandemic-sweeps-the-globe-trump-authorizes-new-bombing-campaign-in-the-middle-east</font></a></div><div style="font-size: small; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="font-size: small; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">no lnx</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>As coronavirus pandemic sweeps the globe, Trump authorizes new bombing campaign in the Middle East</b></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Written by Jake Johnson / Common Dreams March 13, 2020</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Authorized by President Donald Trump, U.S. forces late Thursday carried out a wave of airstrikes across Iraq purportedly targeting an Iran-linked militia that the Pentagon claims was behind a rocket attack that killed two American servicemembers earlier this week.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">The airstrikes risk sparking yet another dangerous escalation of military tensions between the U.S. and Iran at a uniquely perilous moment: Both nations are struggling to contain and combat the novel coronavirus, with Iran hit particularly hard by the pandemic as it works to muster adequate medical resources while in the vice grip of Trump administration sanctions.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The Trump White House, meanwhile, is under fire for bungling its response the the outbreak and failing to devote sufficient government resources to fighting COVID-19, which has infected over 1,400 people in the United States—a number that experts say is likely to rise dramatically in the coming days as the disease spreads and the remarkably slow rate of testing picks up speed.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">“This moment is the last three decades of U.S. foreign policy in miniature: spare nothing for war and military dominance and find little to spare for true threats like climate change and pandemic disease,” tweeted Stephen Wertheim, deputy director of research and policy at the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), a 2020 Democratic presidential candidate, noted Thursday that “the annual Pentagon budget is $738,000,000,000.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">“The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is 1.5% the size,” Sanders tweeted. “If we can find money on bombs and missiles to kill people, we can damn well afford to protect everyone’s health and take care of each other.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 204, 102);">A senior Trump administration official told the Washington Post late Thursday that the president directed U.S. forces to bomb five Kataib Hezbollah weapons facilities with the stated goal of reducing the group’s “ability to carry out future attacks.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 204, 102);"><b>Kataib Hezbollah is the same Iran-linked militia group that the Trump administration blamed—falsely, according to Iraqi officials—for a rocket attack last December that the White House used as a justification to assassinate Iranian Gen. Qassem Soleimani with a drone strike in Baghdad, a move that nearly sparked an all-out war</b>.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">It is not clear whether there were any casualties from the latest round of U.S. airstrikes in Iraq. Harakat al-Nujaba, a separate Iran-backed militia, “accused the United States of hitting militia and Iraqi army headquarters, as well as a civilian airport,” the Post reported.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“In the middle of a global pandemic—while people across the country quarantine in fear and struggle to pay their rent—Trump is bailing out fossil fuel corporations and bombing the Middle East,” tweeted Michael Galant, senior communications associate with advocacy group Win Without War. “It’s all laid bare. For everyone to see.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Assal Rad</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">@AssalRad</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Remember escalation w/#Iran is Trump’s manufactured crisis.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Stories from #Italy & Iran describe fight against #CODVID19 like war. All hands on deck needed. This is when we’re reminded of real crisis & global challenges. We need diplomacy & cooperation now more than ever.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">?????? https://twitter.com/katekizer/status/1238130441359679492 …</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Kate Kizer ??</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">@KateKizer</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">escalating into a direct conflict with Iran is the last thing the U.S., Iran, and the world needs right now. https://twitter.com/JackDetsch_ALM/status/1238128480581234691 …</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>Ryan Costello, policy director with the National Iranian American Council, said in a statement late Thursday that “without a radical change in U.S. policy, we risk repeating the escalatory cycle, threatening to plunge the region in yet another conflict and sucking the U.S. into another endless war.”</b></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“Fortunately, Congress just sent a bipartisan resolution to the president’s desk clarifying that he does not have authority to start a war with Iran and urging him to withdraw troops in hostilities with Iran,” Costello said, referring to the War Powers Resolution passed by the House Wednesday. “Rather than ignore Congress and the American people’s wishes on war and peace, he should sign the resolution and urgently seek diplomacy to put the war threat on ice.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div></div><div style="font-size: small; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"></font></div></div><div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">=</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><a href="https://www.alternet.org/2020/03/how-rudy-giuliani-became-the-shadow-secretary-of-state-with-shady-ties-sprawling-far-beyond-ukraine/"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000">https://www.alternet.org/2020/03/how-rudy-giuliani-became-the-shadow-secretary-of-state-with-shady-ties-sprawling-far-beyond-ukraine/</font></a></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">no lnx</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>How Rudy Giuliani became the shadow secretary of state — with shady ties sprawling far beyond Ukraine</b></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">President Donald J. Trump recognizes former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani prior to signing H.R. 1327; an act to permanently authorize the September 11th Victim Compensation Fund Monday, July 29, 2019, in the Rose Garden of the White House. (Official White House Photo by Joyce N. Boghosian)</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Written by Bob Dreyfuss / TomDispatch March 6, 2020</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Imagine, just for the sake of argument, that the president of the United States was an arrogant, information-challenged, would-be autocrat with a soft spot for authoritarian leaders from China, Russia, and North Korea to Egypt (“my favorite dictator”), Saudi Arabia, and Turkey. And then, suppose that very president, while hollowing out the State Department and slamming its diplomats as “Deep State” troublemakers, were to name a voluble wheeler-dealer attorney as his unofficial, freelance White House go-between with shady characters worldwide. Imagine further that the president would do an end run around the professionals of the U.S. intelligence community — more Deep Staters, natch — and rely instead on conspiracy theories trundled back to Washington in that attorney’s briefcase.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Now, one last unimaginable thing, but humor me: accept that the attorney in question went by the name of Rudy Giuliani.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">That, of course, is a reasonable description of the state of America in 2020. Three-plus years into Donald Trump’s misshapen presidency, as the “adults” fled the room one by one or were pushed to the exits, the president was left with a rump collection of family loyalists and third-tier yes-people around him.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Rarely, if ever, do mainstream media types take a step back to survey the classic Star Wars bar-like crew of know-nothings, Bible-thumpers, and connivers who’ve been assembled as Trump’s “team” and their breathtaking incompetence and perfidy. Luckily, with Giuliani in the mix, there’s at least one figure so wildly over-the-top that analysts and pundits have heaped scorn or ridicule on his head, and often his alone, as a person so outrageously unfit, so borderline deranged, so nakedly in it for profit that it’s impossible to consider him without marveling at the tragicomedy of it all.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Since 2017, however, Rudy Giuliani has emerged as Trump’s shadow secretary of state with his hands in American foreign policy and politics from Iran to Russia, Turkey to Ukraine and beyond. That means anyone, anywhere in the world, with a few million bucks to proffer and an angle to pursue in Washington can avoid Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, the Christian-right uber-hawk from Kansas, and sidle up instead to the former U.S. attorney from the Southern District of New York and mayor of New York City.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">During most of 2019, as is well known to anyone who even casually followed the impeachment proceedings in Congress, Giuliani had a starring role in President Trump’s conspiracy-laden efforts to prove that Ukraine, not Russia, intervened in the 2016 election and that Joe Biden and his son, Hunter, were mixed up in something nefarious there. (To those in the reality-based world, of course, it was Russia, not Ukraine that meddled massively in 2016. And the Bidens, it’s clear, did nothing illegal in Kyiv.)</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">As we shall see, the Trump-Giuliani conspiracy theory about that country originated with and was “fertilized” by three individuals who’d earlier been caught up in Robert Mueller’s special counsel investigation of the White House: Lieutenant General Michael Flynn, the disgraced former national security advisor in the White House; Paul Manafort, who chaired Trump’s election campaign; and Manafort’s Ukraine partner and ally, an apparent operative for Russia’s GRU intelligence service, Konstantin Kilimnik. In other words, the Trump-Giuliani Ukraine adventure did indeed get a boost from Vladimir Putin’s secret service and Moscow’s propaganda machine.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>You’ll remember, perhaps, or maybe you’ve forgotten, that before Mike Pompeo was secretary of state, before his predecessor Rex (“Rexxon”) Tillerson even took the job, it looked for a while like Giuliani was going to get it.</b> He and Donald Trump had been political friends-with-benefits since the mid-1990s, as evidenced by a cringe-worthy 2000 video of Trump placing his lips unbidden on Giuliani-in-drag’s “breast.” The former mayor had quietly sought to reposition himself as the reincarnation of Roy Cohn, the mob-connected lawyer who had been a mentor to the up-and-coming New York real estate tycoon. (“Where’s my Roy Cohn?”) It’s hardly surprising then that, following Trump’s surprise victory in November 2016, Giuliani began lobbying hard for the secretary of state job. At the same time, he was fervently urging the president-elect not to select never-Trumper Mitt Romney for it. (Giuliani did, however, also endorse John Bolton, Washington’s warmonger-in-chief, for the job.)</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Back in 2016, a week or so after the election, a New York Times editorial drily noted that the appointment of Giuliani as secretary of state “would be a dismal and potentially disastrous choice,” that he lacked “any substantive diplomatic experience and has demonstrated poor judgment throughout his career,” appeared “unhinged,” and would come with a “flurry of potential conflicts of interest.” And keep in mind that, back then, Giuliani was only getting started.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">In recent years, much has been written, and accurately so, about the exodus of veteran diplomats — ambassadors to toilers in the ranks — from a gutted Foggy Bottom and its global outposts under both Tillerson and Pompeo. Writing last October for Foreign Affairs, for instance, former diplomat William Burns noted that fewer people took the department’s entrance exam in 2019 than in any year in previous decades. “Career diplomats,” wrote Burns, “are sidelined, with only one of 28 assistant secretary-rank positions filled by a Foreign Service officer, and more ambassadorships going to political appointees in this administration than in any in recent history.” He added: “One-fifth of ambassadorships remain unfilled, including critical posts.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">At the State Department, as one ambassador told the Hill, morale “is at a new low, although I am not sure it could fall much lower than where it has been for the past three years.” And that decline only accelerated after the humiliating dismissal of the U.S. ambassador in Kyiv, Marie Yovanovitch, whose ouster was orchestrated by Giuliani.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">To be sure, the State Department was never a progressive bastion, not during the Cold War years nor in the era when America was the global hyperpower. It is, nonetheless, the main vehicle for any president wishing to use the levers of diplomacy rather than the oft-chosen military option. Now, with the adults gone and the diplomats increasingly neutered, we’re left with Trump and Giuliani. Neither hawks nor doves, they’re vultures, viewing every country as part of a vast veldt where they can pick at carcasses of every sort for their own business or political gain.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">How to Become a Shadow Secretary of State</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Giuliani’s foreign policy portfolio extends far and wide, though it was in Ukraine — specifically with that country’s many corrupt, Russian-leaning oligarchs — that he rocketed to world attention and helped trigger the president’s impeachment. In his world travels, Giuliani has combined his roles as businessman, security consultant, political fixer, and the president’s personal attorney into a mishmash of overlapping identities. He has, in other words, become a kind of walking, talking conflict-of-interest machine.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);"><b>Before zeroing in on Ukraine, however, let’s consider just a few of Giuliani’s other foreign ventures. Since leaving office as New York’s mayor,</b> through Giuliani Partners, the Bracewell & Giuliani law partnership, and (after 2016) the giant law firm of Greenberg Traurig, along with Giuliani Security & Safety and Giuliani Capital Advisers, the former mayor has pulled in millions of dollars working on behalf of foreign clients, including highly controversial ones</span>. Among those deals, contracts, and maneuvers, before and after Trump became president and hired his old friend Rudy to serve as his personal attorney in 2018, Giuliani has been involved in a far-flung series of deals: he’s been a paid lobbyist in Romania; had a cybersecurity contract in<b> Qatar; had deals in Colombia, Argentina, and El Salvador; worked shadow diplomacy (with a business angle) with Venezuela’s President Nicolas Maduro; operated in Japan, Serbia, and Guatemala; and that only begins to tell the story</b>.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Consider Turkey, starting in 2017. Back then, when Lieutenant General Michael Flynn was forced to resign after just a few weeks as national security advisor, it turned out that he had quietly (and without reporting it) been working on behalf of Turkey’s autocratic government, led by President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, during the 2016 election campaign. Erdogan was disturbed by the presence of a dissident, Fethullah Gulen, in the United States. <span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">As an unregistered advocate for Turkey, Flynn lobbied in 2016 to have the United States expel Gulen and send him back to Turkey. Early the next year, Flynn was gone, but no fear, Rudy Giuliani promptly took up the same cause. He began urging President Trump to extradite Gulen to Turkey, where Erdogan was accusing him of having plotted an attempted coup d’état. (In the end, Gulen wasn’t expelled.)</span></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Given Giuliani’s ability to mix policy with business, you won’t be surprised to learn that he was also enmeshed in more lucrative efforts in Turkey. At around the same time, he was lobbying Trump to endorse a prisoner swap involving one of his clients, an Iranian-born Turkish gold trader named Reza Zarrab whom the FBI had arrested in 2016 on charges of money laundering and trying to do an end run around economic sanctions on Iran. According to the New York Times, Zarrab had been working with Halkbank, a major Turkish bank with close ties to Turkish Finance Minister Berat Albayrak who is also President Erdogan’s son-in-law, to “funnel more than $10 billion in gold and cash to Iran.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">At first blush, it might seem odd for Giuliani to offer his services on behalf of an Iranian expat accused of trying to break U.S. sanctions whose family, it turned out, had close ties to former Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Curious, yes, but for Giuliani, business is business and there were bucks to be made.</span> That he would use his connections to the Oval Office in an ultimately unsuccessful appeal for his client is even odder, given that Giuliani is otherwise a militant hardliner when it comes to demanding the overthrow of the Iranian government.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>Case in point: his long-time affiliation with the People’s Jihadists, otherwise known as the Mujaheddin-e-Khalq, or MEK. Like many of Giuliani’s escapades abroad, his efforts with MEK were a money-making project. </b>Along with John Bolton, the late Senator John McCain, former National Security Advisor Jim Jones, and former Attorney General Mike Mukasey, Giuliani has for years been affiliated with the MEK, making perhaps a dozen appearances, mostly paid speeches, at its conventions and rallies.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The MEK has almost no support inside Iran, not only because it’s conducted a terror campaign against that country’s top officials since 1981, but because it operated with the backing of Iraqi autocrat Saddam Hussein during and after the Iran-Iraq war of the 1980s. It’s also widely regarded as a cult. Last year, in the midst of his anti-Joe Biden skullduggery in Ukraine, in his 11th appearance at an MEK confab, Giuliani traveled to Albania, of all places, where the group has established a military and political base. There, he called Trump “heroic” for “doing away with the reckless nuclear agreement and putting [Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps] on the terrorist list.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">In 2018, this reporter attended one of the MEK’s large-scale events, held at a hotel in midtown New York City. General Jim Jones, who became an ultra-hawk after being ousted as President Obama’s national security advisor in 2010, spoke to the gathering first, noting proudly that he is supposedly on a list of people the government in Tehran plans to assassinate.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Rising to speak after Jones, Giuliani seemed jealous. “I hope I say enough offensive things that they’ll put me on that list to kill me,” he commented. Needless to say, both Jones and Giuliani are still alive and kicking, and there’s no evidence that either one is on any Iranian kill list. <span style="background-color: rgb(255, 204, 102);">However, thanks in part to </span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 153, 0);">Giuliani’s hardline, anti-Iran advice to the president, that country’s top general, Qassem Soleimani</span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 204, 102);">, was indeed placed on a presidential kill list and drone assassinated as 2020 began.</span></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">And Then There Was Ukraine</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">It was, of course, in connection with Ukraine that Giuliani’s freelancing came to the world’s attention. In the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence’s impeachment report, his name is mentioned about 160 times. He’s cited, first and foremost because, in that infamous “perfect” July 2019 phone call of his, Trump asked Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to work through him; because the former mayor was the primary organizer of the smear campaign against the actual ambassador to Ukraine, Marie Yovanovitch, who was subsequently fired; and because it was he who, starting as early as May 2019, masterminded a months-long political witch hunt against the Bidens, demanding over and over that Ukraine carry out an ersatz investigation of the man the president then expected to be his chief 2020 election opponent.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Numerous figures, including Ambassador Bill Taylor, who succeeded Yovanovitch at the U.S. embassy in Kyiv, would express dismay over Giuliani’s role as the “irregular” channel for the Trump administration’s Ukraine policy — the “Giuliani factor,” as Ambassador to NATO Kurt Volker called it. The story of how all this led to the president’s impeachment is too well known to be rehashed here.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The Joe Biden/Hunter Biden part of the Ukraine story was straightforward enough in its own way. Far more complicated and troubling was the adherence of the president and Giuliani to a weird conspiracy theory that Ukraine, not Russia, used its intelligence service to try to sway the 2016 election. According to various official reports and in the opinion of virtually every expert who’s studied the matter, it was Russia that intervened to boost Trump’s election campaign. According to Trump and Giuliani, however, Ukraine meddled in 2016 on behalf of Hillary Clinton and indeed, they argue, the actual Democratic National Committee server somehow found its way to Kyiv, thanks to a computer security firm called <span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">CrowdStrike, which Trump claimed was owned by a wealthy Ukrainian. (It is not.)</span></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Naturally enough, this Trump-Giuliani theory was nonsense, but according to the Washington Post, it had its origins — perhaps not surprisingly — in propaganda generated in Moscow. The Post reported that Paul Manafort, Michael Flynn, and Manafort’s partner, Konstantin Kilimnik, “played a role in convincing Trump that Russia did not actually interfere in the 2016 U.S. presidential election, despite what both Mueller and the U.S. intelligence community have concluded, and that it was actually Ukraine.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>According to Rick Gates, Manafort’s deputy, the Ukraine conspiracy theory originated with his boss who “parroted” the line from Kilimnik.</b> And both Manafort and Kilimnik — who was indicted by Mueller — had ties to Moscow operatives and pro-Russian forces in Ukraine, while Kilimnik himself was identified by Mueller and the FBI as part of Russia’s GRU.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">As the Post concluded: “So we have two men [Manafort and Flynn] who have been convicted of offenses related to their Russia ties, have both lied to investigators about their interactions with Russian interests, and who apparently played a significant role in pushing a theory to Trump that Russia did not actually interfere in the 2016 election. They instead pointed the finger at Russia’s nemesis, Ukraine, and that has apparently stuck with Trump for more than three years.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">And it was that line that would be spread eagerly by pro-Trump writers like the Hill’s John Solomon. In a review of Solomon’s pieces, released this month, the Hill’s editors analyzed 14 of his columns with titles like “As Russian collusion fades, Ukraine plot to help Clinton emerges.” In doing so, they found numerous troubling facts about Solomon, his sources, and his overall reporting. As the Hill report put it:</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“Giuliani has indicated he was a key source of information for Solomon on Ukraine, telling the New York Times in November 2019 that he turned over information about the Bidens earlier in the year to Solomon. ‘I really turned my stuff over to John Solomon,’ Giuliani said.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“The former New York City mayor later told the New Yorker he encouraged Solomon to highlight information on the Bidens and Yovanovitch, stating, ‘I said, “John, let’s make this as prominent as possible,”’ adding, “‘I’ll go on TV. You go on TV. You do columns.’”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>Two colorful characters who acted as Giuliani’s Ukraine go-betweens, Lev Parnas and Igor Fruman, have been indicted on conspiracy charges </b>and, according to Fortune, Giuliani, too, could be indicted in that case. As CNN noted in January, it’s nearly unheard of for a U.S. Attorney’s office — in this case the one for the Southern District of New York (SDNY) — to end up indicting a former U.S. attorney who led the same district. CNN added: “The SDNY community has watched in disbelief as Giuliani continues to seek the spotlight even as the investigation has unfolded and expanded into new fronts on a nearly weekly basis. The impeachment inquiry has also unleashed new evidence regarding his role performing shadow diplomacy on behalf of President Donald Trump as recently as [mid-January].”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Indeed, Giuliani is still at it. In concert with a collection of corrupt ex-prosecutors in Ukraine and in his ongoing role as shadow secretary of state-cum-intelligence chief, Giuliani is still gathering conspiracy-riddled information on the Bidens in Kyiv — and Attorney General William Barr has obligingly created an “intake process in the field” to absorb Giuliani’s work product straight into the Department of Justice. One thing is guaranteed: “Secretary of State” Giuliani will have a clear field in Kyiv, since Ambassador Taylor was unceremoniously fired on January 1st of this year.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Bob Dreyfuss, an investigative journalist and TomDispatch regular, is a contributing editor at the Nation and has written for Rolling Stone, Mother Jones, the American Prospect, the New Republic, and many other magazines. He is the author of Devil’s Game: How the United States Helped Unleash Fundamentalist Islam.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Follow TomDispatch on Twitter and join us on Facebook. Check out the newest Dispatch Books, John Feffer’s new dystopian novel (the second in the Splinterlands series) Frostlands, Beverly Gologorsky’s novel Every Body Has a Story, and Tom Engelhardt’s A Nation Unmade by War, as well as Alfred McCoy’s In the Shadows of the American Century: The Rise and Decline of U.S. Global Power and John Dower’s The Violent American Century: War and Terror Since World War II.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Copyright 2020 Bob Dreyfuss</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">=</font></div></div><div><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"></font></span></div><div><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">220 raw story</font></span></div><div><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></span></div><div><div style="font-family: " times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" font-size="font-size" large="large" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb"></div><div style="font-family: " times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" font-size="font-size" large="large" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb">
</div><div style="font-family: " times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" font-size="font-size" large="large" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb">This will disappear down the memory hole in short order….</div><div style="font-family: " times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" font-size="font-size" large="large" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb">
</div><div style="font-family: " times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" font-size="font-size" large="large" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb"><b>“A White House memo justifying the U.S. strike that killed Iranian military leader Maj. Gen. Qasem Soleimani in January makes no mention of an imminent threat, which was President Trump’s rationale for the attack.</b></div><div style="font-family: " times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" font-size="font-size" large="large" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb">
</div><div style="font-family: " times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" font-size="font-size" large="large" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb"></div></div><div><p style="margin-top: 8px; margin-bottom: 8px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">---</font></p><p style="margin-top: 8px; margin-bottom: 8px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">an 220</font></p><p style="margin-top: 8px; margin-bottom: 8px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><a href="https://www.alternet.org/2020/02/bombshell-report-finds-iraqi-officials-doubt-trumps-basis-for-escalating-to-the-brink-of-war/" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; outline: none;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000">https://www.alternet.org/2020/02/bombshell-report-finds-iraqi-officials-doubt-trumps-basis-for-escalating-to-the-brink-of-war/</font></a></p><p style="margin-top: 8px; margin-bottom: 8px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">no lnx</font></p><p style="margin-top: 8px; margin-bottom: 8px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>‘Bombshell’ report finds Iraqi officials doubt Trump’s basis for escalating to the brink of war</b></font></p><p style="margin-top: 8px; margin-bottom: 8px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">President Donald J. Trump, joined by Vice President Mike Pence, senior White House advisors and senior military personnel, delivers remarks during a national televised address Wednesday, Jan. 8, 2020, from the Cross Hall of the White House, responding to the retaliatory missile strikes against U.S. military and coalition forces in Iraq on Tuesday by the Islamic Republic of Iran. (Official White House Photo by Shealah Craighead)</font></p><p style="margin-top: 8px; margin-bottom: 8px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></p><p style="margin-top: 8px; margin-bottom: 8px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Written by Jake Johnson / Common Dreams February 7, 2020</font></p><p style="margin-top: 8px; margin-bottom: 8px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">In a “bombshell” revelation that calls into question one of the Trump administration’s stated justifications for assassinating Iranian Gen. Qasem Soleimani—a move that nearly sparked a region-wide military conflict—Iraqi intelligence officials told the New York Times that they believe ISIS, not an Iran-linked militia, was likely responsible for the Dec. 27 rocket attack that killed an American contractor at an airbase near Kirkuk, Iraq.</font></p><p style="margin-top: 8px; margin-bottom: 8px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></p><p style="margin-top: 8px; margin-bottom: 8px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>The Times reported Thursday that “Iraqi military and intelligence officials have raised doubts about who fired the rockets… saying they believe it is unlikely that the militia the United States blamed for the attack” was responsible.</b></font></p><p style="margin-top: 8px; margin-bottom: 8px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></p><p style="margin-top: 8px; margin-bottom: 8px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 204, 102);">“All the indications are that it was Daesh</span>,” Brigadier General Ahmed Adnan, the Iraqi chief of intelligence for the federal police at the K-1 air base, told the Times, using the Arabic acronym for ISIS. “We know Daesh’s movements.”</font></p><p style="margin-top: 8px; margin-bottom: 8px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></p><p style="margin-top: 8px; margin-bottom: 8px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The Trump administration has not released a single piece of evidence showing that the Iraqi militia Khataib Hezbollah, which has ties to Iran, was responsible for the attack on K-1. The group has denied carrying out the attack.</font></p><p style="margin-top: 8px; margin-bottom: 8px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></p><p style="margin-top: 8px; margin-bottom: 8px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The U.S. responded to the rocket attack days later with deadly airstrikes on Khataib Hezbollah targets in Iraq and Syria, setting off a dangerous escalatory spiral that brought Iran and the U.S. to the brink of war.</font></p><p style="margin-top: 8px; margin-bottom: 8px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></p><p style="margin-top: 8px; margin-bottom: 8px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">On Jan. 2, the U.S. assassinated Soleimani with a drone strike in Baghdad ordered by President Donald Trump. Following the assassination, which was widely condemned as an act of war, the U.S. Department of Defense issued a statement claiming without evidence that Soleimani “orchestrated attacks on coalition bases in Iraq over the last several months—including the attack on December 27th—culminating in the death and wounding of additional American and Iraqi personnel.”</font></p><p style="margin-top: 8px; margin-bottom: 8px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></p><p style="margin-top: 8px; margin-bottom: 8px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">But Iraqi officials told the Times that “based on circumstantial evidence and long experience in the area where the attack took place,” there is good reason to be skeptical about U.S. claims that Khataib Hezbollah was behind it.</font></p><p style="margin-top: 8px; margin-bottom: 8px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></p><p style="margin-top: 8px; margin-bottom: 8px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">As the Times reported:</font></p><p style="margin-top: 8px; margin-bottom: 8px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>The rockets were launched from a Sunni Muslim part of Kirkuk Province notorious for attacks by the Islamic State, a Sunni terrorist group, which would have made the area hostile territory for a Shiite militia like Khataib Hezbollah.</b></font></p><p style="margin-top: 8px; margin-bottom: 8px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></p><p style="margin-top: 8px; margin-bottom: 8px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Khataib Hezbollah has not had a presence in Kirkuk Province since 2014.</font></p><p style="margin-top: 8px; margin-bottom: 8px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The Islamic State, however, had carried out three attacks relatively close to the base in the 10 days before the attack on K-1. Iraqi intelligence officials sent reports to the Americans in November and December warning that ISIS intended to target K-1, an Iraqi air base in Kirkuk Province that is also used by American forces…</font></p><p style="margin-top: 8px; margin-bottom: 8px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></p><p style="margin-top: 8px; margin-bottom: 8px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">These facts all point to the Islamic State, Iraqi officials say.</font></p><p style="margin-top: 8px; margin-bottom: 8px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“We as Iraqi forces cannot even come to this area unless we have a large force because it is not secure,” Brig. Gen. Adnan said of the area from which the rocket attack was launched. “How could it be that someone who doesn’t know the area could come here and find that firing position and launch an attack?”</font></p><p style="margin-top: 8px; margin-bottom: 8px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></p><p style="margin-top: 8px; margin-bottom: 8px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">In response to the Times report, Jamal Abdi, president of the National Iranian American Council, tweeted: “Al-Qaeda attacked the U.S. on 9/11 and we went to war with Iraq. If this report is true, ISIS attacked the U.S. and we nearly went to war with Iran.”</font></p><p style="margin-top: 8px; margin-bottom: 8px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Sina Toossi</font></p><p style="margin-top: 8px; margin-bottom: 8px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">@SinaToossi</font></p><p style="margin-top: 8px; margin-bottom: 8px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">This is huge: Iraqi military & intelligence officials say it’s highly unlikely that a rocket attack that killed an Iraqi-American contractor in early January—& led to an escalation cycle that almost started a war—was carried out by an Iran-allied militia.https://www.nytimes.com/2020/02/06/world/middleeast/iraq-iran-hezbollah-evidence.html …</font></p><p style="margin-top: 8px; margin-bottom: 8px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Iraqi soldiers at the K-1 base, which was struck by rockets on Dec. 27.</font></p><p style="margin-top: 8px; margin-bottom: 8px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Was U.S. Wrong About Attack That Nearly Started a War With Iran?</font></p><p style="margin-top: 8px; margin-bottom: 8px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Iraqi military and intelligence officials have raised doubts about who fired the rockets that started a dangerous spiral of events.</font></p><p style="margin-top: 8px; margin-bottom: 8px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></p><p style="margin-top: 8px; margin-bottom: 8px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">nytimes.com</font></p><p style="margin-top: 8px; margin-bottom: 8px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">184</font></p><p style="margin-top: 8px; margin-bottom: 8px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">3:57 PM - Feb 6, 2020</font></p><p style="margin-top: 8px; margin-bottom: 8px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Twitter Ads info and privacy</font></p><p style="margin-top: 8px; margin-bottom: 8px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">119 people are talking about this</font></p><p style="margin-top: 8px; margin-bottom: 8px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></p><p style="margin-top: 8px; margin-bottom: 8px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 204, 102);">CODEPINK</font></p><p style="margin-top: 8px; margin-bottom: 8px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 204, 102);">@codepink</font></p><p style="margin-top: 8px; margin-bottom: 8px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 204, 102);">The US almost started WWIII based on questionable evidence.</font></p><p style="margin-top: 8px; margin-bottom: 8px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">After all of the violence in the Middle East following the attack on US bases, #Iraqi officials are now questioning the US's claim that the #Iran-backed militia Khataib Hezbollah are to blame. https://buff.ly/31CpWqT </font></p><p style="margin-top: 8px; margin-bottom: 8px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></p><p style="margin-top: 8px; margin-bottom: 8px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Iraqi soldiers at the K-1 base, which was struck by rockets on Dec. 27.</font></p><p style="margin-top: 8px; margin-bottom: 8px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Was U.S. Wrong About Attack That Nearly Started a War With Iran?</font></p><p style="margin-top: 8px; margin-bottom: 8px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Iraqi military and intelligence officials have raised doubts about who fired the rockets that started a dangerous spiral of events.</font></p><p style="margin-top: 8px; margin-bottom: 8px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></p><p style="margin-top: 8px; margin-bottom: 8px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">nytimes.com</font></p><p style="margin-top: 8px; margin-bottom: 8px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">47</font></p><p style="margin-top: 8px; margin-bottom: 8px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">1:15 PM - Feb 6, 2020</font></p><p style="margin-top: 8px; margin-bottom: 8px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Twitter Ads info and privacy</font></p><p style="margin-top: 8px; margin-bottom: 8px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">44 people are talking about this</font></p><p style="margin-top: 8px; margin-bottom: 8px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>U.S. officials insisted to the Times that they have “solid evidence” showing that Khataib Hezbollah carried out the attack, but they have not released any of this evidence to the public or to Iraqi officials.</b></font></p><p style="margin-top: 8px; margin-bottom: 8px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></p><p style="margin-top: 8px; margin-bottom: 8px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“We have requested the American side to share with us any information, any evidence, but they have not sent us any information,” Lt. Gen. Muhammad al-Bayati, chief of staff for former Prime Minister Adel Abdul Mahdi, told the Times.</font></p><p style="margin-top: 8px; margin-bottom: 8px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></p><p style="margin-top: 8px; margin-bottom: 8px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Ilan Goldenberg, Middle East security director at the Center for a New American Security think tank, tweeted that the U.S. Congress “must ask questions about this and get the intel.”</font></p><p style="margin-top: 8px; margin-bottom: 8px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></p><p style="margin-top: 8px; margin-bottom: 8px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Responsible Statecraft managing editor Benjamin Armbruster agreed.</font></p><p style="margin-top: 8px; margin-bottom: 8px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></p><p style="margin-top: 8px; margin-bottom: 8px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“Congress needs to investigate ASAP,” Armbruster tweeted.</font></p><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"></font></div></div><div><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"></font></span></div><div><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">many art'ls intercept</font></span></div><div><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></span></div><div><h1 class="yiv4891258075null" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; line-height: 32.5px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Spinning Iran</font></h1><p style="margin: 10px 0px; padding: 0px; line-height: 24px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Whenever there is news, there is spin. Following last week’s assassination of Iran’s Maj. Gen. Qassim Suleimani and Iran’s retaliatory strike on two U.S. bases in Iraq, Trump’s army of supporters emerged in full force to celebrate the killing. And, as Lee Fang writes, <a rel="nofollow" target="blank" href="https://theintercept.us11.list-manage.com/track/click?u=43fc0c0fce9292d8bed09ca27&id=b2a8c516e3&e=613b87ca24" style="text-decoration-line: none;">many of those who praised Trump’s decision-making had skin in the game</a>: “Many of the pundits … have undisclosed ties to the defense industry — the only domestic industry that stands to gain from increased violence.” Those pundits included former Gen. David Petraeus, who now works for an investment firm with holdings in defense contractors, and Jeh Johnson, former Obama Homeland Security secretary, now on the board of Lockheed Martin. <a rel="nofollow" target="blank" href="https://theintercept.us11.list-manage.com/track/click?u=43fc0c0fce9292d8bed09ca27&id=4e0b80f82b&e=613b87ca24" style="text-decoration-line: none;">We made a video compilation of those pundits</a>. </font></p><p style="margin: 10px 0px; padding: 0px; line-height: 24px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">While the media gave military hawks a voice, reporters were quick to jump on Democratic presidential candidate Sen. Elizabeth Warren for calling Suleimani a “murderer” <em>and</em> his death an “assassination” — and later agreeing that Suleimani was classified as a “terrorist.” <a rel="nofollow" target="blank" href="https://theintercept.us11.list-manage.com/track/click?u=43fc0c0fce9292d8bed09ca27&id=2efcd1f4a0&e=613b87ca24" style="text-decoration-line: none;">There is no contradiction</a>, writes Robert Mackey,<a rel="nofollow" target="blank" href="https://theintercept.us11.list-manage.com/track/click?u=43fc0c0fce9292d8bed09ca27&id=06561e4b95&e=613b87ca24" style="text-decoration-line: none;"> in using all those terms to describe the head of the Quds Force</a>. “What’s instructive,” he continues, “is to see how political reporters, sensing that Republicans would attack Democrats for using the word assassination, responded by pressing the presidential candidates who used the word to say they were wrong to do so, and asking those who did not use it to comment on those who did.”</font></p></div><div><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"></font></span></div><div><a href="https://www.alternet.org/2020/01/they-have-no-idea-what-they-have-done-terrorist-groups-in-africa-now-vowing-revenge-on-us-after-suleimani-killing/"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000">https://www.alternet.org/2020/01/they-have-no-idea-what-they-have-done-terrorist-groups-in-africa-now-vowing-revenge-on-us-after-suleimani-killing/</font></a></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">no lnx</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">‘They have no idea what they have done’: Terrorist groups in Africa now vowing revenge on US after Suleimani killing</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Baghdad,Iraq,January 3,2020,thousands of Iraq people participating in funeral program of Iranian general Qasim Suleiman.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Written by Matthew Chapman / Raw Story January 11, 2020</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">President Donald Trump’s decision to eliminate Iranian general Qassim Suleimani could have far-reaching consequences that are difficult to appreciate in the short term. And one example is already being seen in Africa.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">According to The Daily Beast, the Islamic Movement of Nigeria (IMN), a West African group of Shi’a converts formed in the wake of the Iranian revolution of 1979, has sworn vengeance against the United States for the assassination.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">IMN issued a statement saying that Suleimani was an “ardent anti-imperialist who gave the United States of America and their stooges in the region sleepless nights,” and his mission against America would be “accomplished by his brothers, children, and students from resistance men and mujahideen from all the peoples of the world that reject humiliation and submission to the tyrants of this century.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“America will pay for the killing of Soleimani,” said Ibrahim Hussien, an IMN supporter who participated in an anti-America protest in Nigeria’s capital city of Abjua on Monday. “They have no idea what they have done.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>This comes just after Somalia’s al-Shabab group killed an American serviceman and two contractors at a military installation in Northern Kenya</b>. This attack, part of the group’s “Al-Quds Will Never Be Judaized” campaign, came just two days after the Suleimani killing. There is no clear evidence that al-Shabab is linked to Iran, but Suleimani has reportedly sent operatives to the region in the past.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Iran has historically shied away from engaging foreign rivals directly, instead opting to use proxy forces. Indeed, Iranian Ambassador to the U.N. Majid Takht-Ravanchi told CNN Friday that, “We can speak on behalf of the Iranian government, we are not responsible for the actions that others might take” — a clear signal that they will not condemn violence committed against Americans by these proxies.</font></div></div><div><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"></font></span></div><div><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><a href="https://www.alternet.org/2020/01/the-excuses-for-assassinating-soleimani-are-illogical-and-stupid-and-this-is-going-to-get-ugly/"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">https://www.alternet.org/2020/01/the-excuses-for-assassinating-soleimani-are-illogical-and-stupid-and-this-is-going-to-get-ugly/</font></a></span></div><div><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></span></div><div><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></span></div><div><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"></font></span></div><div><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></span></div><div><div class="mag-header" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px 0px 19px; padding: 0px; position: relative; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><h3 class="magcat-titlte entry-title" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; letter-spacing: 1px;"><a href="https://www.alternet.org/2020/01/killing-of-soleimani-evokes-dark-history-of-political-assassinations-in-the-formative-days-of-shiite-islam/" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: all 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer; display: block; letter-spacing: 0px; line-height: 1.4;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000">Killing of Soleimani evokes dark history of political assassinations in the formative days of Shiite Islam</font></a></h3><div class="grid-post-box-meta mag-meta" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 7px 0px 0px; padding: 0px;"><span class="author-italic author vcard" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><a href="https://www.alternet.org/author/deinaabdelkader/" title="Posts by Deina Abdelkader" class="author url fn" rel="author" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;">Deina Abdelkader</a>, <a href="https://www.alternet.org/author/the-conversation/" title="Posts by The Conversation" class="author url fn" rel="author" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;">The Conversation</a></font></span></div></div><div class="mag-excerpt entry-content" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><p style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.5;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">‘Zulm,’ an Arabic word meaning extreme injustice, could explain why Iran appears to be so united in anger at the killing of Gen. Qassam Soleimani.</font></p></div></div><div><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">=</font></span></div><div><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></span></div><div><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><div style=""><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">no lnx</font></div><div style=""><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style=""><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The media is ignoring why Trump’s assassination of Suleimani was such an egregious betrayal</font></div><div style=""><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Baghdad,Iraq,January 3,2020,thousands of Iraq people participating in funeral program of Iranian general Qasim Suleiman.</font></div><div style=""><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style=""><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Written by Joshua Holland January 10, 2020</font></div><div style=""><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style=""><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The mainstream debate over Trump’s order to kill Iranian general Qassim Suleimani and Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis, deputy head of Iraq’s Popular Mobilization Forces, has been typically superficial. The primary argument in support of the drone strike is that Suleimani was a bad guy with blood on his hands, which is a juvenile non sequitur. There are any number of military commanders around the world who would fit that description at any given time and, despite his prominence, Suleimani implemented policies rather than formulating them. As Maysam Behravesh wrote at Foreign Affairs, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps “is a complex institution with deep roots, making it less than susceptible to ‘leadership decapitation,'” and the killing of Suleimani will only “prompt it to act more ruthlessly and with greater calculation” in the future. Opposition to the assassination has largely centered on the legal questions surrounding Trump’s order, his refusal to notify Congress and the potential for blowback against the United States.</font></div><div style=""><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style=""><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">While it’s appropriate and understandable that most analyses have centered on the geopolitical conflict between the US and Iran, there is a tragic irony in the way that Iraq–still traumatized by decades of shock and awe at the hands of Western powers and still struggling to stand up a legitimate, nominally democratic government–has basically been relegated to a backdrop against which tensions between Tehran and Washington play out.</font></div><div style=""><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style=""><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The conversation might be very different if Iraq’s interests, and how the attack may impact its stability and domestic political conflicts, were featured more prominently.</font></div><div style=""><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style=""><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">More than a decade ago, in 2007, Raed Jarrar and I reported for AlterNet that the American media were largely ignoring an important story. After years of civil strife between various parliamentary factions, a legislative majority had emerged to demand the withdrawal of US troops from their ostensibly sovereign country. The Bush administration worked with its hand-picked Prime Minister, Nouri Al-Maliki (a previously little-known figure whom they liked in part because of his independence from Iran), to undermine their position, ignoring the constitution that had been adopted after a lengthy and difficult process led by the Bush administration’s occupation government. The international community then ignored Iraqi legislators later that year when a majority of them asked the United Nations not to extend the mandate allowing US troops to remain in the country.</font></div><div style=""><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style=""><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Something similar is playing out today. In the aftermath of the Suleimani assassination, the Iraqi parliament once again passed a resolution demanding the US withdraw troops from the country. It’s worth noting that while there are MPs who support a continuing American military presence in the country for the sake of stability, they voted “present” because Trump’s strike made it politically toxic to vote against the measure.</font></div><div style=""><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style=""><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Following the vote, the current PM, Adel Abdul-Mahdi, who resigned last fall but continues to serve in a caretaker role, asked Secretary of State Mike Pompeo “to send a delegation to Iraq tasked with formulating the mechanism for the withdrawal of U.S troops from Iraq,” according to the Associated Press, but Pompeo claimed that the effort to expel US troops from their country is an Iranian plot rather than an expression of popular sentiment in Iraq and Trump threatened to levy sanctions on Iraq “like they’ve never seen before” if the Iraqi government follows through. (That threat is especially pernicious given that the last US sanctions regime lead to the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Iraqi children. ) As is consistent with a long pattern, Iraqis are being denied agency by Washington.</font></div><div style=""><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style=""><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style=""><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Jennifer Jacobs</font></div><div style=""><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">@JenniferJJacobs</font></div><div style=""><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">On Iraqi PM asking him to start negotiating withdrawal of US troops immediately, Pompeo: "OK, he didn't quite characterize the conversation correctly.</font></div><div style=""><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">"But...we are happy to continue the conversation with the Iraqis about what the right structure is" while continuing mission. https://twitter.com/JenniferJJacobs/status/1215608901498015745 …</font></div><div style=""><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style=""><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Jennifer Jacobs</font></div><div style=""><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">@JenniferJJacobs</font></div><div style=""><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Iraq’s prime minister has asked Pompeo to send officials to Iraq to work out a mechanism for the withdrawal of American troops, @Khalidansary reports https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-01-10/iraq-s-premier-pushes-u-s-to-discuss-exit-of-troops …</font></div><div style=""><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style=""><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">If Iraqis’ perspectives featured into the reporting on Trump’s attack, Americans might come to appreciate how outraged they are that al-Muhandis and other Iraqi nationals were killed in a strike on Iraqi territory. They might understand that Suleimani was in Iraq as a guest of the government on routine business when the strike occurred, and that he was seen as a hero to many Iraqis, who credited him for defeating the feared and almost universally loathed Islamic State.</font></div><div style=""><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style=""><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">And as Trita Parsi points out on this week’s podcast, while Suleimani was a brutally efficient commander, he was, contrary to the dominant narrative in the US, a moderating influence on Iraq’s sprawling network of Shia militia groups. Iraq’s loosely organized militias are influenced by Tehran rather than tightly controlled by the Islamic state, and no other member of the Iranian establishment held the same sway with these groups.</font></div><div style=""><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style=""><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Iraqis are now fearful of becoming caught in a crossfire in an escalating conflict between the US and Iran–of Iraqi civilian deaths mounting as the rivals wage a proxy war within their borders. They have reason to be. And many are furious at both the US and Tehran for trampling over their hard-fought sovereignty.</font></div><div style=""><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style=""><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Just 17 years after a US war of choice that was sold to the world on a pack of lies and which led to the death and displacement of millions of Iraqis, it is this reality that most of the discussion here at home simply ignores.</font></div><div style="font-size: small;">
</div></span></div></div>