Trump to speak at 11 Eastern.
Election ploy gone wrong
They have a pro-US government of sort, the US is supposedly there right now to help fight ISIS. Iraq is mostly Shiite so any democratically elected government is going to be Shiite. They are at the very least on good terms with Iran, but I don’t believe them to be a vassal state at all.
Yeah but Trump said that if Iraq forced them to leave then he would put massive sanctions on them (see my earlier posts here) because they had a multi billion dollar base and so on. Funny thing, his precious base is one of the two the Iranian attacked.
I have heard it, it’s just stupid and an easy way to manipulate people who lack critical thinking skills.
that speech seemed pretty reasonable. This was more a chess move than anything else, so maybe I will halfways go to sleep.
So here is the deal with the current situation: Trump says there were no casualties and he doesn’t want to escalate this, Iran says the killed 80 US soldiers. What really happened? Likely both sides are lying and the real numbers are less than 80, war propaganda is always full of lies. The Russians did the same thing when they went into Syria, claiming no casualties despite ISIS and friends alleging to have killed their troops. The truth came out when the bodies started coming home.
And remember the NBC Tehran correspondent saying that Iran threatened to attack Dubai and Haifa, Israel if the US retaliates. Right now Iran looks good, and reasonable as well, while Trump looks like an impulsive moron who has no idea what he is doing. Either he’s mad with power or someone is blackmailing him with tapes from Epstein’s place. Maybe this is a scheme by those around him to make sure he doesn’t get re-elected, because he looks like a fool. Iran can’t win a war, but they can cause damage and aren’t taking any shit. It would be better if everyone calmed down, but it’s unlikely.
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I was thinking the same thing, it’s like Trump took Iran’s knight and ended up in check. Score 1-0 Iran. And no I’m not a fan, but you can’t argue they are in the wrong. The Iraqi PM even said that Soleimani was there for some mediation talks between the US, Iraq, and Iran and was supposed to meet the PM the same day he was killed.
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This was no election ploy. Iran tried to take over our embassy in a repeat of1979. It was a mistake. Trump, for all his flaws, is not a Jimmy Carter. More importantly, thanks to the Permian Basin, the USA doesn’t need ME oil. So Trump had much more ability to respond than Carter.
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Iran has a really, really good missile set up. There is zero chance they missed our base by accident. This was a face save move. They knew Trump would go ape shit if they killed American soldiers.
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An uncovered disaster was the Ukraine airliner that crashed on take off. It was a Boeing 737-800, new, with recent inspections. According to Iran, it had an engine failure and crashed. But Iran is refusing to release the black boxes. To me, having seen planes downed by missiles before, it looks like it blew up in the air, not some sort of hard landing. It’s spread out all over the place, not a straight line of wreck. Pure speculation, but I willing to bet money that a scared-as-crap Iranian SAM operator shot it down by accident – again, pure speculation on watching guys under pressure do shit like shoot cows by accident.
Does the man even have it in him to ever give a speech where he doesn’t demean President Obama and/or his administration in some way?
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You can’t expect him to run for reelection on his political accomplishments can you?
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The acting Iraqi PM is practically an Iranian puppet.
This was 100% my thought yesterday. I would even speculate there was some sort of message (wink wink) given to the US military beforehand so that there would be no preemptive action on the US’s part.
Your point about the airline though…hadn’t thought of that but yes, too much of a “coincidence”.
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If he was then the US wouldn’t be so kind to him. He has no choice but to deal with Iran, seeing as they are neighbors and Iraq is mostly Shiite and the Iranian regime is Shiite. Iran is pretty much the home of Shiaism, going against them would be like a conservative Catholic country going against the Vatican.
I will believe this when the US releases pictures of the bases showing no significant damage. Iran claims to have killed around 80 US soldiers. Someone is trying to save face for sure, I’m just not sure who. And it’s funny how Trump totally changed his tone after the attacks, before he was making all sorts of threats and saying he was going to blow up world heritage sites. He belongs in a circus, not the white house.
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Having worked in government, I say you are right but he isn’t in the wrong place
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If Americans were killed it would not remain secret. They have friends, families, etc. They also have life insurance.
And Trump was never going to destroy any heritage sites. He may have tried to order it but it would not have been obeyed.
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The pictures of blown up desert are all over the news.
As an aside, and speaking as a soldier who has served on Casualty Notification teams (and, in fact, sit as the senior casualty notification officer in my area), and been injured (and had friends killed), there is zero ability to “cover up” casualties in this kind of situation.
The soldiers have friends, who talk. The soldiers have family, who talk. Etc. There are literally thousands of people who who know, within a day or so, of who was hurt or killed.
The most obfuscation that can happen is: (1) delay of notice for a couple of days or (2) in a situation where there are many casualties, reporting a lesser number (as the ones notified think their loved ones are among the unlucky few). Outside of casualty reports in Vietnam (promptly corrected) neither 1 or 2 has happened since Korea in the USA. And the reason for the mis-reports in Korea were for strategic reasons, to avoid reporting remaining active troops.
Your suggestion that there may be a cover up of 80 US casualties belies a massive ignorance of how the modern military works and is an insult to our warriors.
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Yeah, apparently the Iranians called in the when/where on the attack. It was literally a show.
For contrast, remember Iran just attacked the Saudi facilities on the other side of the sea — a much more complex task, given the distance and missile/air defenses. It went off without a hitch. This was lobbing some missiles off over a much shorter, less-defended, distance.
What this was was a blink by the Iranians. The B-52s were up in the air last night, along with countless F-35s, et al. Iran was about a fricking inch from becoming an economic non-entity.
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And tons of fucking paperwork.
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That proves nothing. No pictures of the base anywhere.
From what I hear they were under reporting deaths in Afghanistan and Iraq the whole time. I can’t verify it, but I don’t doubt it. To me everything looks like propaganda here, 20 years ago in high school history class there was a section in our textbooks talking about how in wars the news often under reported casualties and made up stories of what really went on in battles, if that was going on back then I would be suprised if it had changed.
If you feel insulted that is your problem, not mine. I don’t necessarily believe that there were 80 soldiers killed, I just think that with the huge discrepancy between US and Iranian claims someone isn’t telling the full story and I trust the US government just as much as I trust Iran. My guess is that some soldiers were killed, some were injured, maybe not 80, but launching over 20 missiles and hitting nothing but sand doesn’t sound right.
Did you see this in the news? This guy works for NBC too.
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You are the one claiming the USA lied about casualties, despite it being impossible thing to hide.
And demanding photos of a secure military base – apparently every inch to prove a negative. I’m sure the military will be right on that. No security concerns, at all!
BTW, Ali Arouzi is a noted propagandist for Iran. Not exactly a credible source. Next time source someone more credible, like Miss Cleo.
You’re too stupid (or full of hatred) to bother with any further.
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Iran has no problem providing photos You need to see this, maybe you will change your mind:
https://www.presstv.com/Detail/2020/01/08/615682/Iran-missile-attack-Iraq-air-base-Qassem-Soleimani
Credible enough for the NBC payroll.
You’re right, I hate stupid people. You should stick with your own kind.
But it’s not on CNN so it can’t be true, right?