Trump Resorts To Reckless Risk Of War Ploy To Distract From Impeachment Trial

"I am gonna start a war with Iran before I face a real Senate trial to remove me!"

"I think we've now ended any hope of keeping Iraq out of Iran's arms. I think we're going to see the Iraqi parliament, possibly as early as today, send all American troops home. Yes, it's good that he's gone but it comes at an extraordinarily high price, which is why the Bush and Obama administrations chose not to do something like this."  - Former CIA specialist Michael Morrell, this morning on CBS.

"However you want to put it  the doomsday clock has now moved another tick toward midnight." -   Journalist Cal Perry last night on MSNBC.

"There is absolutely no reason for anyone in the U.S. to credit anything the president or his administration says about matters of life and death, or war and peace, until it is demonstrably verified."   - Chris Hayes last night on 'All In'

Before the new year even began - with the glittering ball dropping in NYC-  Janice warned that Trump was going to try to distract from attention on the upcoming Senate trial (and the increasing evidence of his crimes) by starting a war with Iran. Well, it looks like that prediction and event is well underway, this after we learned last night Trump ordered an assassination hit on a top Iranian general.  And coincidentally, that order coming soon after a tranche of documents - mainly unredacted emails- was released showing clearly how Trump broke the law (the  Impoundment Control Act of 1974).   That is, holding up money (to Ukraine)  appropriated by congress, to try to achieve a political benefit for himself.  But this is the nature of the turd he is, a walking two bit traitor turd with no honor and not enough gumption to just resign like Nixon did..

Here's basically what we learned:  Trump ordered an air strike that killed powerful Iranian general Qassem Suleimani in Baghdad in the early hours of Friday, in a dramatic escalation of an already bloody struggle between Washington and Tehran for influence across the region.

Suleimani, who ran Iranian military operations in Iraq and Syria, was targeted while being driven from Baghdad airport by local allies from the Popular Mobilization Units (PMU). The deputy head of the PMU, Abu Mahdi al-Muhandes, a close Suleimani associate, was also killed in the attack.  (Note: Iran confirmed Suleimani’s death, saying the US would be responsible for the consequences.)

According to a released Pentagon statement:

“General Suleimani was actively developing plans to attack American diplomats and service members in Iraq and throughout the region.  This strike was aimed at deterring future Iranian attack plans. The United States will continue to take all necessary action to protect our people and our interests wherever they are around the world.”

Of course, this is classic subterfuge and in any case, a reckless provocation which risks dramatically escalating conflict.  This was pointed out yesterday a.m. on CBS morning show by former CIA specialist Michael Morrell.  (This was after the initial U.S.  strike targeting Iranian militants). Morrell also warned that such an aggressive move - and any more like it (such as the assassinations last night)  risked  Iraq demanding the entire U.S. presence leave.  That may now be coming sooner rather than later.

Minutes before the statement Trump tweeted a U.S. flag without comment. Later, the White House put out a statement saying the strike was a “decisive defensive action” carried out “at the direction of the president”.  Trump himself had the absolute audacity to blab the purpose of the assassination strike was "to stop a war" - right out of the pages of Orwell's '1984'.

So no surprise most of us with sense regard this propaganda blather as just that, or ripe PR  horse manure.  The actual act was a clear 'wag the dog' tactic to deflect attention from his impeachment travails - especially given GOP Senators are beginning to break ranks with Moscow Mitch and demand a proper Senate trial (with documents, witnesses).   In other words it was a decisive defensive action on behalf of Trump.  Because this orange asswipe cares no more about protecting this nation, or defending it, than he cared about defending Ukraine from Russian incursions in the Donbass region.  Opting to withhold critical military aid unless Zelenskiy rolled over and did his bidding on the Bidens. Par for the course actions for a narcissist weasel grifter and confirmed traitor.

 All of which is plain as day to anyone with an IQ over room temperature digits.  It is also self-evident to anyone who has followed Trump's behavior and  the timelines of his decisions for the past three years.

The rogue preemptive action also was a blatant violation of  Principle IV against such aggression under the Nuremberg Laws, e.g.:

"The crimes hereinafter set out are punishable as crimes under international law: (a) Crimes against peace: (i) Planning, preparation, initiation or waging of a war of aggression or a war in violation of international treaties, agreements or assurances; (ii) Participation in a common plan or conspiracy for the accomplishment of any of the acts mentioned under (i). "

Suleimani was commander of the Quds Force, the elite, external wing the Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), which the Trump administration designated as a terror organization in April last year. The Pentagon statement claiming responsibility for the strike accused the Quds Force of being responsible for the deaths of hundreds of U.S. service members and  wounding thousands more.

Many consider Suleimani to have been the second most powerful person in Iran, behind the Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamanei, and arguably more powerful than President Hassan Rouhani. Through a mix of security operations and diplomatic coercion, Suleimani has certainly been more responsible than anyone else for projecting Iran’s influence in the region.

The cowardly assassination strike to deflect from Trump's impeachment turmoil  comes at a time when Iraq is already on the brink of an all-out proxy war.  Also,  hours after a two-day siege of the US embassy in Baghdad by a mob of PMF militants and their supporters. The Pentagon accused Suleimani of having masterminded the mob attack, but again with no proof at all.  Why should anyone believe the Pentagon anymore when it's clearly fallen under the control and sway of the most pathologically mendacious liar the planet has ever known? (15, 413 "false or misleading claims in the past 1,033 days", according to The Washington Post's running tally.)

Meanwhile, it's clear to all except the most intellectually-challenged that Trump is even prepared to start a war with Iran to take the heat off his political tribulations. This is how far gone, how massively deranged he is.  We know, for example, the U.S. has deployed 750 airborne troops to Kuwait as a rapid reaction force available for use in Iraq, and officials has said up to 3,000 could be sent in the coming days. The defense secretary, Mark Esper  (the same guy who once told interviewer Margaret Brennan the Kurds were "on their own" after the U.S. left them in the lurch)  said on Thursday that more militia attacks were expected and the U.S. reserved the right to take preemptive action to stop them.

Translation: Esper and fellow Pentagon toadies reserved the right to use whatever flim flam and pretexts - even if they meant war-  to protect traitor Trump in his distraction ploys..

Esper - recreating his cowardly stance with the Kurds - said:

“There are some indications out there that they may be planning additional attacks. If we get word of attacks, we will take pre-emptive action as well to protect American forces, protect American lives."

What Esper really means is that he will take preemptive action to protect Trump at any cost, if it means keeping Americans' weary eyes off a future impeachment trial. 

Another aspect Esper doesn't grasp - but Senator Chris Murphy surely  does-  as Murphy said on Twitter:

"One reason we don’t generally assassinate foreign political officials is the belief that such action will get more, not less, Americans killed."  

Also, not mentioned, is that we refrain from assassinating foreign officials  because we don't wish to have other nations assassinating our officials!

One last thing: As Andrea Mitchell noted last night, "Iran is not Iraq and there is no Saddam Hussein" -  or a weak military to subdue.  In other words, whatever conflict Trump gets us into - to try and salvage his orange hide - won't be a cakewalk like Iraq was alleged to be for Bush II.

See also:

Donald Trump | Iran

Trump’s Illegal, Impeachable Act of War

And:

Iran

Soleimani's Assassination: The Mafia Would Have Been Proud

And:

Donald Trump

Not Déjà Vu; Just Piles of Crap All over Again

And:

Iran | Iraq

The Assassination of Gen. Qasem Soleimani

And:

Iran

The Folks Who Lied about Iraq and Afghanistan Are Lying about Iran. We Must Stop a New War.

And:

Donald Trump | Iran

Drum Major Trump Marches Us Into the Folly of War

After The Latest Gun Terror Are We NOW Ready To Act Like The Aussies- Or Like The Proverbial Ostrich?

Sutherland First Baptist Church, in Sutherland Springs, TX where 26 were slaughtered by a psycho yesterday.

The church carnage wrought yesterday in Texas, with 26 lives wiped out by a lone gunman dressed in black ought to be defined as domestic terror - but I doubt it will be.  For reference, while Donnie Dotard was quick to call the NYC truck attack killer an "animal" he didn't use any similar parlance to describe Devin Patrick Kelley, the killer of more than 3 times as many people yesterday. WTF? Are white boy  mass killers  just "deranged" while Islamics are all "animals"? Double standard much.

Dotard compounded his idiocy by insisting (in Tokyo): this was a "mental health problem, not a gun problem" adding it was "too soon to go into gun control'". No,  you asshole, it's exactly the right time to go into gun control, as it was after the Las Vegas massacre by older white guy Steven Paddock. So the question becomes are we just going to sit on our asses until the next white, 'Murican terrorist snaps and slaughters innocents?

As I've written before, the mental health argument is just a copout, a red herring. Firmer gun control, namely registration - including psychological testing to qualify to own a firearm (similar to tests would be drivers have to go through to get a license),  would solve a lot of the problems. Government  buying up all the military assault rifles like the Aussies did after their Port Arthur, Tasmania massacre (see more below), would also go a long way to limiting supply of the deadliest weapons.

After all, the Second Amendment was never intended to be a national suicide pact.

Meanwhile, we have the likes of Texas Governor Greg Abbott proffering the usual empty platitudes like "Let us ask for God's help healing and prayers".  Last I was involved in any religion I seem to recall the saying:  "God helps those who help themselves".  We can help ourselves by limiting the supply of deadly weapons like Australia did after its worst massacre. That is, if we have the will and the balls to do so, as opposed to just shrugging shoulders and surrendering to the NRA.

Yet in dodging questions on TX gun regs this a.m. on CBS Early Show, Abbott preferred to go into the nebulous area of stopping all "evil" from truck killers, knife wielders and the like - without noting that gun slaughter has led to dozens of times more deaths.  The unholy truth is that most shootings are  NOT ideological, terror-based or random but rather domestic (in people's homes) - either suicides or one spouse (usually male) killing the other after a fiery argument.  

Assaying all mass shootings between 2009 and 2015, The Huffington Post found that 70 percent occurred in the home. Of these, 57 percent involved a family member or current or former intimate partner. 81 percent of the victims were women and children. These killings were not done by 'crazies'  or Islamic terrorists but usually normal people who simply lost it in the midst of a heated argument and reached for the weapon nearest and dearest - a gun. (See, e.g. the book: 'Why We Snap', by R. Douglas Fields, showing how the right confluence of circumstances, triggers can send anyone into a rage and precipitous action. You don't have to be a psycho to be a mass murderer!)

Further, no sane or reasonable person can deny if there weren't so many military- style assault weapons available then even a mentally ill person (like Adam Lanza who committed the Sandy Hook massacre) wouldn't be able to get their mitts on them to commit MASS atrocities.

But sadly, the cojones of much of the nation are still locked down by the NRA especially those of our representatives who only choose to talk about "prayers"  for the deceased. But no thought to actually DO something to halt this bullshit.  Thus,  Sen. Chris Murphy's apt statement yesterday:

"No one is safe so long as congress chooses to do absolutely nothing in the face of this epidemic".

So true, and it IS an epidemic, every bit as virulent as an Avian flu epidemic would be and the level of slaughter - deaths (including suicides), attests to that.

And let me make this clear one time, I am - despite being an atheist - appalled that a particular species of slime ball would choose a house of worship to carry out his malevolent act. Though an atheist, I am not about to deprive anyone of  expressing their faith any way they want, or worship however they desire. They can do any of that, in any form they wish, because that is their choice. As Jefferson once put it: "It does me no injury for my neighbor to say there are twenty gods or no God. It neither picks my pocket nor breaks my leg" . So believe what you will, whether in talking snakes,  virgin birth resurrections or reincarnations. As long as you don't inveigh on my individual liberties you can do what you will.

In the current case, the gunman was identified as Devin Patrick Kelley, 26, according to two law enforcement officials who spoke on the condition of anonymity because the investigation was continuing. Kelley, who lived in New Braunfels, Tex., died shortly after the attack. He'd served in the Air Force at a base (Holloman)  in New Mexico but was court-martialed in 2012 on charges of assaulting his wife and child. He was sentenced to 12 months’ confinement and received a “bad conduct” discharge in 2014, according to Ann Stefanek, the chief of Air Force media operations.

Kelley started firing at the First Baptist Church in Sutherland Springs not long after the Sunday morning service began at 11 a.m., officials said. He was armed with a Ruger military-style rifle, and within minutes, many of those inside the small church were either dead or wounded. The victims ranged in age from 5 to 72, and among the dead were several children, a pregnant woman and the pastor’s 14-year-old daughter. It was the deadliest mass shooting in the state’s history. At least 20 more were wounded.

When Kelley emerged from the church, an armed neighbor exchanged gunfire with him, hitting Mr. Kelley, who fled in his vehicle. Neighbors apparently followed him, chasing him into the next county, Guadalupe County, where Mr. Kelley crashed his car. Mr. Kelley was found dead in his vehicle. Officials said it was unclear how Mr. Kelley had died. At the church, he left behind a scene of carnage. Of the 26 fatalities, 23 people were found dead inside the church, two were found outside, and one died later at a hospital.

Isn't it about damned time we call this what it is, unadorned, straight out domestic terror? Isn't it time to stop being coy and for a minority of super collector gun owners to be dictating rules for the rest of us?  The key to acting, to doing something proactive and positive to halt this nonsense, is to first accept that the security and needs of the many outweigh those of the few. That means  a minority of gun obsessives and collectors - especially of military assault rifles - can no longer be allowed to dictate gun laws via the NRA to the rest of us.

And IF this is accepted then we need to act like Australia did in the wake of its worst massacre in 1996. On April 28, 1996, a 28-year-old Australian,  Martin Bryant,  ate lunch at Broad Arrow Cafe in Port Arthur, Tasmania, a historic penal colony and popular tourist resort. After his meal, Bryant returned his tray, removed a semiautomatic rifle from his bag, and opened fire. By the time Bryant was caught a day later, 35 people were dead and 23 wounded in what became the worst mass shooting in Australian history.

What did the Aussies do that made their country safer? Among other things, the Australian government banned automatic and semiautomatic firearms, adopted new licensing requirements, established a national firearms registry, and instituted a 28-day waiting period for gun purchases. It also bought and destroyed more than 600,000 civilian-owned firearms, in a scheme that cost half a billion dollars and was funded by raising taxes. The entire overhaul took just months to implement.

Oh yes, there were the usual howls in the wake but the Aussie legislators showed they were not Milquetoasts and were not going to buckle. Predictably, the NRA  worked with gun-rights groups in the country to oppose any legislation that would make owning guns more difficult. Arguments against gun control ranged from the familiar “guns don’t kill people” to calling the legislation an insult to the vast majority of law-abiding gun owners. But proponents of gun control, who had long before the Port Arthur massacre called for restrictions on firearms ownership, pointed out that in Australia most people who committed gun violence had no criminal or psychiatric record. They added that it was pointless to compare the impact of an attacker with a semiautomatic gun with one brandishing a knife.

As Simon Chapman, an Australian academic who was co-convener of the Australian Coalition for Gun Control from 1992 to 1997, wrote last year about the group’s successful advocacy for a gun registry: “One day during a TV interview in 1995, we said as we always did ‘We register cars. We register boats.’ But this time he added ‘We even register dogs. So what’s the problem in registering guns?"

Indeed there ought to be NO freaking problem! If ANY entity or device has a life impact it ought to be worthy of registration. Do you lose freedom because of registering your car or dog ? Of course not!

The first step then to halt domestic terror is to regulate and register all those weapons with which it is most likely carried out - assault rifle.

Two questions for the ardent gun obsessive follow:

Without invoking any paranoid ideations or beliefs, why would you not want gun registration like in Australia? 

Why would you not want high powered military assault weapons out of circulation- using a method similar to the Aussies?

Don't give me any balderdash doing so "takes away my freedom". No it does not!  Your "freedom" doesn't depend on owning or firing military grade weapons (designed specifically for mass killing)  that the Founders could no more have conceived of than space ships!

See also:

U.S. Military Failed to Send Texas Gunman's Conviction Record to FBI And:

http://www.smirkingchimp.com/thread/celisa-calacal/76101/lax-texas-gun-laws-the-nra-and-another-horrendous-deadly-mass-shooting

Excerpt: "A database by Slate of gun regulations state-by-state gives Texas an "F" rating. Texas currently has no laws requiring background checks for private sales, no regulating of firearm registration and no ban on the purchase of assault weapons. The state does not have any restrictions on magazine capacity, nor does it have any restrictions on firearm ownership for the mentally ill. Texas also allows open carry with a permit and concealed carry on college campuses.

Texas’ relaxed gun control laws are the result of a majority-Republican legislature that shares views with the NRA on guns and gun regulation. Donations from the powerful gun lobby to these Republicans suggest that opposition to any type of gun control came with persistent nudges and bankrolling from the NRA itself."

Update:  As per the first link above, the Air Force failed to convey the gunman's record of violence and imprisonment to the FBI for entry in the national database. This again argues for a separate, local registration office (i.e. for each state or municipality)  to minimize the chance of such snafus such as occurred with Kelley. Also, a measure of redundancy is introduced.