72 Virgins for Qasem Soleimani

[Fat Cat]

It's laughable to watch so many people on the left scramble to defend Iran--who just last month executed 1,500 of their own citizens--and cook up reasons why we shouldn't off a self-declared, uniformed, murderous enemy of the United States.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2019%E2%8 ... n_protests

[nafod]

#BREAKING: US military tells Iraq it is preparing to 'move out': official letter - via @AFP

Honestly, good.

Head fake!

Holy shit, it is amateur hour out there.

[Grandpa's Spells]

NEW: Gen. Milley just came back to talk to reporters, after briefing us minutes ago, to correct the record on the Iraq memo making the rounds:

"That letter is a draft, it was a mistake, it should not have been released."

Jesus Christ.

[nafod]

Maybe we can bomb their cultural sites on the way out.

[Fat Cat]

NEW: Gen. Milley just came back to talk to reporters, after briefing us minutes ago, to correct the record on the Iraq memo making the rounds:

"That letter is a draft, it was a mistake, it should not have been released."

Jesus Christ.

lolololololol did they really? hahaha. oh man.

[Fat Cat]

#BREAKING: US military tells Iraq it is preparing to 'move out': official letter - via @AFP

Honestly, good.

Head fake!

Holy shit, it is amateur hour out there.

I'm easy to please. We killed our enemy and got out of Iraq in one perfect moment.

[johno]

I'd like to see an informed "sunk cost" analysis of our Iraq presence. I see little reason to stay.

[Fat Cat]

I assume this means we can keep the $3,712,000,000 in economic and military assistance we gave them last year.

[Alfred_E._Neuman]

So now that Iran has lobbed some missiles into our Iraq occupation, how long until we're at full-on war?

[Fat Cat]

Who knows? I'm genuinely curious what the Iranians are thinking about where this all ends up. I certainly don't want war and see no reason why we would let ourselves be provoked.

[nafod]

I wish Crusader was POTUS. We need his calm voice and steady steerage in these trying times.

[Grandpa's Spells]

It appears Iranian air defenses accidentally shot down a commercial 737.

[Fat Cat]

It wasn't a great day for the mullahs, to be sure, but has there been any confirmation that they flamed this plane?

[nafod]

It wasn't a great day for the mullahs, to be sure, but has there been any confirmation that they flamed this plane?

I doubt that is it. But still...Ukraine, Boeing 737, and Mullahs in one sentence. Who'd have thunk it.

[Fat Cat]

It wasn't a great day for the mullahs, to be sure, but has there been any confirmation that they flamed this plane?

I doubt that is it. But still...Ukraine, Boeing 737, and Mullahs in one sentence. Who'd have thunk it.

It is an amazing confluence, whether coincidental or not. Also in Iran in the last 24 hours:

A 4.7-magnitude earthquake struck two towns in southern Iran near the Bushehr nuclear power plant on Wednesday, the state-run Islamic Republic News Agency reported.

https://www.smh.com.au/world/middle-eas ... 1578481507

[Grandpa's Spells]

It wasn't a great day for the mullahs, to be sure, but has there been any confirmation that they flamed this plane?

Evidence in favor:
Video on Twitter where there probably wasn't time to doctor it shows a falling plane engulfed in flames that ends up crashing/exploding.
Plane's transponder went suddenly offline at 8,000 feet.
Tehran immediately blamed the crash on technical difficulties.
Tehran will not turn black boxes over to Boeing.

Seems exceedingly likely some overactive air defenses shot it down. Large number of Westerners on the flight, including 70+ Canadians.

[Fat Cat]

Hmmm, I definitely hear what you're saying. The rush to judgment re: the cause by the Iranian government is shady as hell.

Re: the missile attack, I'm wondering if there wasn't a back room deal where Iranian missiles intentionally missed so that they could have a face-saving attack while not doing anything that would force an American response.

An added twist would be that they took out the airliner as their more serious riposte.

[Grandpa's Spells]

Before the air liner was shot down, an Iranian-American journalist pointed out that Iran's long time MO is to wait months and then strike a soft target in a way that's deniable:

[Fat Cat]

Ya, to me it's plausible. Doesn't make it fact, but it certainly bears investigation, which I have no doubt the Iranians will do their best to hamper.

[Alfred_E._Neuman]

The fact that the plane apparently was mostly full of Iranian students headed back to university after the Christmas break makes me hesitant to call it a deliberate act of revenge. I'd lay my money on accidentally shot down.

[Fat Cat]

They were executed for celebrating Christmas? j/k But the mullahs killed like 1,500 Iranian protestors a month earlier. I wouldn't put it beyond them.

[The Ginger Beard Man]

If only all the people who are so outraged by this had been equally outraged when Obama, without congressional approval, used the military to overthrow Quaddafi, which of course left the door open for Muammar to be murdered and Libya to become a failed state that is being exploited by terrorists (who, incidentally, have resurrected the slave trade.). If they had turned that outrage into staying home on Election Day, or maybe even voting for Mitt Romney, then Romney probably would have become President. In which case we would either be in his second term now, or maybe the first term of whichever democrat would have beat him in 2016 (is that you, Hillary?). Either way, Trump would not be President, he would just be some old crank on Twitter would a shitty TV show.
Oh, well.

[nafod]

If only all the people who are so outraged by this had been equally outraged...

If only the people not outraged now had been consistently not outraged back then...

It’s the way of the universe.

[The Ginger Beard Man]

Why be outraged?
In the final week of his life, Soleimani was behind a rocket attack that killed an American and an attack on a US Embassy (not his first). Trump was justified.
I get that you think it may not have been a wise decision, but it wasn’t outrageous or illegal.
Some of you Trump haters have lost the ability to think rationally.

[nafod]

I'm not outraged.

My point is that the taking of turns at being outraged, and the calling out of the other side for not being outraged in sync with your outrage gets old, and it is always whiny.

FINALLY Repubs that can nut up and tell that Orange-Headed Malarkatron that he's FOS

Senator Mike Lee

Lee, speaking to reporters after a roughly hourlong closed-door meeting with administration officials, characterized it as "the worst briefing I've seen, at least on a military issue."

"I find this insulting and demeaning ... to the office that each of the 100 senators in this building happens to hold. I find it insulting and demeaning to the Constitution of the United States," Lee said.

Lee did not say which briefer made the assertion but specified that no administration representative contradicted them. He added that he was going to have a "conversation" with Trump about the remarks.

"I find that absolutely insane. I think that's unacceptable," Lee added.

Paul added that he found the briefing "less than satisfying" and knocked the administration for using the 2002 war authorization as the basis for last week's airstrike against an Iranian general.

"I see no way in the world you could logically argue that an authorization to have war with Saddam Hussein has anything to with having war with people currently in Iraq," Paul told reporters.

He added that using the 2002 authorization to justify the strike that killed Gen. Qassem Soleimani in Baghdad was "absurd" and an "insult."

"Let's have the debate, and let's have some senators stand up," Paul said.

Defense Secretary Mark Esper, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, CIA Director Gina Haspel and Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Gen. Mark Milley were there. Which one do you think won the Full Of Shit Award for sycophancy?