World Affairs Brief, January 17, 2020 Commentary and Insights on a Troubled World.
Copyright Joel Skousen. Partial quotations with attribution permitted. Cite source as Joel Skousen’s World Affairs Brief (http://www.worldaffairsbrief.com).
Emphasis mostly mine
OFFICIALS DESPERATE TO JUSTIFY FALSE INTEL FED TO TRUMP
In the aftermath of the Soleimani assassination strike at the Baghdad airport last week, US officials hit all the mainstream media and television sites in an attempt to shore up the “imminent threat” narrative they used to justify the strike against Iran’s top general. Trump bragged before a rally that he had just killed the #1 terrorist in the world—#1, he kept repeating. What an idiot! And stupid supporters blindly cheered him on. Confusion reigned as it became known that Soleimani had been presented as a target to focus on months ago in a presentation by John Bolton to president Trump, which blew the “sudden threat” claim out the window. So they inflated the threat to claim that Iran not only wanted to “blow up” the huge Deep State embassy in the Green Zone of Baghdad but three other embassies as well—without naming them. Defense Secretary Esper was caught off guard with that claim and said he hadn’t seen any intel to that effect, further throwing the administration’s story into disarray. Then he later came back to reinforce the official story. Anyone watching all this would think the agencies were making things up on the fly. Naturally, they were overjoyed when Iran had to admit they shot down a Ukrainian airliner that was taking off from Tehran. In their criticism, the US government never mentions that we shot down an Iranian airliner in 1988 killing all aboard.
