theintercept--2020-01-05--As Sanders and Warren Vow to Block War With Iran, Biden and Buttigieg Offer Better-Run Wars

of the Iraq war , and the prospect of a bloody sequel sparked by Donald Trump ’ s assassination of a senior Iranian official in Baghdad this week , has the potential to transform the Democratic presidential primary , offering voters radically different visions of how the next commander in chief proposes to deal with the ongoing chaos caused by the 2003 invasion .
Sens .
Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren described the drone strike ordered by Trump as a dangerous escalation and promised to end American wars in the Middle East .
Joe Biden , the former vice president @ @ @ @ @ @ @ mayor of South Bend , Indiana , offered more muted criticism , suggesting that the killing of Maj. Gen. Qassim Suleimani might have been justified if a more responsible commander in chief was in charge .
“ We must do more than just stop war with Iran , ” Sanders tweeted on Friday .
“ We must firmly commit to ending U.S. military presence in the Middle East in an orderly manner .
We must end our involvement in the Saudi-led intervention in Yemen .
We must bring our troops home from Afghanistan.
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ the left for initially prefacing her alarm at the threat of “ another costly war ” with the statement that Suleimani was “ a murderer , responsible for the deaths of thousands , including hundreds of Americans , ” amplified Sanders ’ s anti-war message more clearly on Friday .
“ Donald Trump is dangerous and reckless , ” she wrote .
“ He ’ s escalated crises and betrayed our partners .
He ’ s undermined our diplomatic relationships for his own personal , political gain .
We can not allow him @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
We must speak out.
” Biden also criticized the killing of the general as needlessly provocative , but issued a statement that embraced the Trump administration ’ s argument that Suleimani , who orchestrated deadly attacks on U.S. soldiers during the post-war occupation of Iraq , “ deserved to be brought to justice for his crimes against American troops.
” The former vice president — who voted to authorize the use of military force in Iraq when he was still in the Senate , and later authored a bizarre plan to partition @ @ @ @ @ @ @ — was critical mainly of what he called Trump ’ s failure to explain his “ strategy and plan to keep safe our troops and embassy personnel ” and Trump ’ s lack of a “ long-term vision ” for the U.S. military ’ s role in the region .
Buttigieg ’ s initial statement also endorsed Trump ’ s claim that killing an Iranian general who supported Iraqi militias that oppose the ongoing presence of U.S. troops in their country was in line with the commander in chief ’ s responsibility “ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ interests.
” “ There is no question that Qassim Suleimani was a threat to that safety and security , and that he masterminded threats and attacks on Americans and our allies , leading to hundreds of deaths , ” Buttigieg wrote .
“ But there are serious questions about how this decision was made and whether we are prepared for the consequences.
” Like Biden , and to a lesser extent Warren , Buttigieg seemed to glide past the contradictions inherent in describing the killing of 603 American troops in Iraq by Iraqis @ @ @ @ @ @ @ but of course those soldiers were only there because of the invasion Sanders has repeatedly called on the campaign trail “ the worst foreign policy blunder in the modern history of the United States.
” “ ‘ Yeah but what ’ s your strategy ?
’ is the safest , lamest , most DC criticism possible , ” Sanders foreign policy adviser Matt Duss observed on Twitter .
“ Trump ’ s Iran policy is foolish , dangerous , and driven by hardline ideologues who ’ ve been pushing for war for years @ @ @ @ @ @ @ for achieving it .
The policy needs to change.
” If the ongoing calamity in Iraq does factor into the decisions of Democratic primary voters , it won ’ t be the first time .
Then-Sen. Hillary Clinton ’ s 2002 vote to authorize the invasion played a pivotal role in the 2008 Democratic primary , contrasting sharply with Barack Obama ’ s opposition , as a state senator at the time , to what he called , “ A dumb war .
A rash war .
A war based not on reason @ @ @ @ @ @ @ but on politics.
” Four years earlier , the capture of Saddam Hussein just one month before the 2004 Iowa caucuses had seemed to tilt the Democratic contest in the opposite direction .
That year , as President George W. Bush ’ s approval rating surged 9 points following Hussein ’ s arrest , Iowa voters turned away from an insurgent critic of the war , Vermont Gov .
Howard Dean , in favor of a more hawkish senator and decorated veteran , John Kerry , who was seen as more electable in @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ’ s strike on Iran ’ s leading military figure , Biden and Buttigieg , egged on by conservative commentators , appear to be vying for the mantle of John Kerry 2.0 as each man argues that his prior experience with national security makes him the best alternative to Trump in the general election .
On the campaign trail and in social media ads , Biden has stressed his foreign policy credentials and familiarity with the intricacies of Iran ’ s military capabilities .
Biden told voters in Iowa on Friday that he @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ’ s likely retaliation .
After Warren was hammered on social networks by Sanders supporters for not being outspoken enough in her initial statement , she posted comments on Twitter making her opposition to a war with Iran much more clear .
“ We ’ re on the brink of yet another war in the Middle East — one that would be devastating in terms of lives lost and resources wasted , ” Warren wrote .
“ We ’ re not here by accident .
We ’ re here because a reckless president @ @ @ @ @ @ @ have spent years pushing us here.
” “ Donald Trump ripped up an Iran nuclear deal that was working , ” she added .
“ He ’ s repeatedly escalated tensions .
Now he ’ s assassinated a senior foreign military official .
He ’ s been marching toward war with Iran since his first days in office — but the American people won ’ t stand for it.
” “ And I ’ ll tell you why , ” she added .
“ What we ’ re doing right now in Afghanistan @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of the United States , it is not helping the safety and security of the world , it is not helping the safety and security of Afghanistan .
We need to bring our troops home and then we need to make a big shift : We can not ask our military to keep solving problems that can not be solved militarily .
We ’ re not going to bomb our way to a solution.
” Some Sanders campaign aides and supporters , eager to draw votes from the left , cast Warren as @ @ @ @ @ @ @ proposal , last May , for the Pentagon to achieve net zero carbon emissions and her vote in favor of a recent military budgets was evidence that she is a secret warmonger .
While Warren appeared eager to focus on other issues on Saturday , with her Twitter feed turning to issues like the rights of disabled workers , the threat of white nationalists emboldened by Trump , and prosecuting bankers , Sanders stressed his plan to work with Rep. Ro Khanna on a bill that would cut off funding for any offensive @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Speaking on Saturday in Iowa , Sanders was met with cheers from supporters when he said that the first course of action when lawmakers return to Washington next week should be “ for the Congress to take immediate steps to restrain President Trump from plunging our nation into yet another endless war.
” “ This country needs a whole lot of things , but one thing that we do not need is another war , ” Sanders added .
“ We ’ ve got enough of those.
” Warren , unlike Sanders , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ campaign appearances , pausing for a “ gaggle ” before taking selfies with supporters .
On Saturday in Iowa , she said that , by killing Suleimani , “ Donald Trump has taken us to the brink of war .
We don ’ t need more war in the Middle East , we need to stop endless war in the Middle East.
” “ We have been at war in this region for 20 years now , and it has meant thousands of American lives lost and huge costs imposed on our country @ @ @ @ @ @ @ also means millions of people in the Middle East who have lost their lives , been injured , or displaced .
We need to stop this endless war.
” Asked by Daniella Díaz of CNN if she would have given the order to assassinate the Iranian general , Warren said no and added that she would never have precipitated the current crisis , as Trump did , by withdrawing from the multinational nuclear agreement with Iran negotiated by Obama ’ s secretary of state , John Kerry .

The legacy of the Iraq war, and the prospect of a bloody sequel sparked by Donald Trump’s assassination of a senior Iranian official in Baghdad this week, has the potential to transform the Democratic presidential primary, offering voters radically different visions of how the next commander in chief proposes to deal with the ongoing chaos caused by the 2003 invasion.
Sens. Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren described the drone strike ordered by Trump as a dangerous escalation and promised to end American wars in the Middle East. Joe Biden, the former vice president, and Pete Buttigieg, the former mayor of South Bend, Indiana, offered more muted criticism, suggesting that the killing of Maj. Gen. Qassim Suleimani might have been justified if a more responsible commander in chief was in charge.
“We must do more than just stop war with Iran,” Sanders tweeted on Friday. “We must firmly commit to ending U.S. military presence in the Middle East in an orderly manner. We must end our involvement in the Saudi-led intervention in Yemen. We must bring our troops home from Afghanistan.”
We must do more than just stop war with Iran. We must firmly commit to ending U.S. military presence in the Middle East in an orderly manner. We must end our involvement in the Saudi-led intervention in Yemen. We must bring our troops home from Afghanistan. — Bernie Sanders (@BernieSanders) January 3, 2020
Warren, who faced criticism from the left for initially prefacing her alarm at the threat of “another costly war” with the statement that Suleimani was “a murderer, responsible for the deaths of thousands, including hundreds of Americans,” amplified Sanders’s anti-war message more clearly on Friday. “Donald Trump is dangerous and reckless,” she wrote. “He’s escalated crises and betrayed our partners. He’s undermined our diplomatic relationships for his own personal, political gain. We cannot allow him to drag us back into another war. We must speak out.”
Biden also criticized the killing of the general as needlessly provocative, but issued a statement that embraced the Trump administration’s argument that Suleimani, who orchestrated deadly attacks on U.S. soldiers during the post-war occupation of Iraq, “deserved to be brought to justice for his crimes against American troops.” The former vice president — who voted to authorize the use of military force in Iraq when he was still in the Senate, and later authored a bizarre plan to partition the country along ethnic and sectarian lines — was critical mainly of what he called Trump’s failure to explain his “strategy and plan to keep safe our troops and embassy personnel” and Trump’s lack of a “long-term vision” for the U.S. military’s role in the region.
(Trump offered a glimpse of his addled vision on Saturday, threatening to strike 52 targets in Iran, including cultural sites, representing, he tweeted, “the 52 American hostages taken by Iran many years ago.”)
Buttigieg’s initial statement also endorsed Trump’s claim that killing an Iranian general who supported Iraqi militias that oppose the ongoing presence of U.S. troops in their country was in line with the commander in chief’s responsibility “to protect Americans and our national security interests.” “There is no question that Qassim Suleimani was a threat to that safety and security, and that he masterminded threats and attacks on Americans and our allies, leading to hundreds of deaths,” Buttigieg wrote. “But there are serious questions about how this decision was made and whether we are prepared for the consequences.”
Like Biden, and to a lesser extent Warren, Buttigieg seemed to glide past the contradictions inherent in describing the killing of 603 American troops in Iraq by Iraqis as a crime akin to terrorism, but of course those soldiers were only there because of the invasion Sanders has repeatedly called on the campaign trail “the worst foreign policy blunder in the modern history of the United States.”
“‘Yeah but what’s your strategy?’ is the safest, lamest, most DC criticism possible,” Sanders foreign policy adviser Matt Duss observed on Twitter. “Trump’s Iran policy is foolish, dangerous, and driven by hardline ideologues who’ve been pushing for war for years. Who cares what the strategy is for achieving it. The policy needs to change.”
If the ongoing calamity in Iraq does factor into the decisions of Democratic primary voters, it won’t be the first time.
Then-Sen. Hillary Clinton’s 2002 vote to authorize the invasion played a pivotal role in the 2008 Democratic primary, contrasting sharply with Barack Obama’s opposition, as a state senator at the time, to what he called, “A dumb war. A rash war. A war based not on reason but on passion, not on principle but on politics.”
Four years earlier, the capture of Saddam Hussein just one month before the 2004 Iowa caucuses had seemed to tilt the Democratic contest in the opposite direction. That year, as President George W. Bush’s approval rating surged 9 points following Hussein’s arrest, Iowa voters turned away from an insurgent critic of the war, Vermont Gov. Howard Dean, in favor of a more hawkish senator and decorated veteran, John Kerry, who was seen as more electable in wartime.
In the aftermath of Trump’s strike on Iran’s leading military figure, Biden and Buttigieg, egged on by conservative commentators, appear to be vying for the mantle of John Kerry 2.0 as each man argues that his prior experience with national security makes him the best alternative to Trump in the general election. On the campaign trail and in social media ads, Biden has stressed his foreign policy credentials and familiarity with the intricacies of Iran’s military capabilities.
Biden told voters in Iowa on Friday that he doubts Trump is capable of handling Iran’s likely retaliation.
The prospect of direct conflict with Iran is greater than ever. Does Donald Trump have a strategy for what comes next? Nothing we have seen from this Administration suggests that they are prepared to deal with the risks we now confront. pic.twitter.com/RF7DD3rcDb — Joe Biden (@JoeBiden) January 4, 2020
His campaign shared an ad on social networks in which Biden described himself as a prospective commander in chief who would be “ready on day one to pick up the pieces of Donald Trump’s broken foreign policy and repair the damage he has caused around the world.”
We need a leader who will be ready on day one to pick up the pieces of Donald Trump's broken foreign policy and repair the damage he has caused around the world. pic.twitter.com/mB6i1U2yPv — Joe Biden (@JoeBiden) January 3, 2020
Buttigieg also suggested that he would be better equipped to prosecute American wars than Trump, telling voters in New Hampshire that “taking out a bad guy is not a good idea unless you are ready for what comes next, so there’s a lot of questions that Americans are asking today.”
I'm in New Hampshire where I addressed the events unfolding in the Middle East. This must not be the beginning of another endless war. pic.twitter.com/WMzybRgVh4 — Pete Buttigieg (@PeteButtigieg) January 3, 2020
In an online ad, Buttigieg stressed his own military service as an intelligence analyst in Afghanistan to argue that he would be more strategic and responsible about the use of military power than Trump.
“America deserves a Commander-in-Chief who knows what that sacrifice means and who will honor the sacred promise we make to our veterans.” —@PeteButtigieg pic.twitter.com/015fBreDra — Win the Era HQ (@wintheera) January 3, 2020
But what makes the 2020 primary campaign fundamentally different from 2004 is that two leading Democrats have already established themselves as skeptics of American military power in a way that Howard Dean — who later lobbied for regime change in Iran — never did.
Speaking in Iowa on Friday, Sanders connected his opposition to a new war with Iran to his vote against the Iraq war in 2003.
Bernie Sanders addresses Iran tensions after killing of top Iranian military leader Qassem Soleimani: "This is a dangerous escalation that brings us closer to another war in the Middle East." https://t.co/WcUzjDHTea pic.twitter.com/R6uYrw4eEE — CBS News (@CBSNews) January 3, 2020
His campaign also resurfaced a video they produced of Sanders laying out his long record of anti-war activism.
I was right about Vietnam. I was right about Iraq. I will do everything in my power to prevent a war with Iran. I apologize to no one. pic.twitter.com/Lna3oBZMKB — Bernie Sanders (@SenSanders) January 3, 2020
The senator’s supporters shared clips from his speech on Friday, in which he observed that “it is rarely the children of the billionaire class who face the agony of reckless foreign policy,” and from an interview he did with CBS in June, when he scoffed at the idea that Trump deserved credit for having not yet started a catastrophic war with Iran.
"I know that it is rarely the children of the billionaire class who face the agony of reckless foreign policy, it is the children of working families." @BernieSanders #NoWarWithIran pic.twitter.com/x0p9qjNxvd — People for Bernie (@People4Bernie) January 3, 2020
Bernie on Iran 6 months ago pic.twitter.com/BKfvkOgycz — S????T??L?? (@CobraKeiser) January 3, 2020
After Warren was hammered on social networks by Sanders supporters for not being outspoken enough in her initial statement, she posted comments on Twitter making her opposition to a war with Iran much more clear.
“We’re on the brink of yet another war in the Middle East — one that would be devastating in terms of lives lost and resources wasted,” Warren wrote. “We’re not here by accident. We’re here because a reckless president, his allies, and his administration have spent years pushing us here.”
“Donald Trump ripped up an Iran nuclear deal that was working,” she added. “He’s repeatedly escalated tensions. Now he’s assassinated a senior foreign military official. He’s been marching toward war with Iran since his first days in office — but the American people won’t stand for it.”
All three of my brothers served in uniform. I know the sacrifices we ask of them and their families. Trump’s actions put every service member and diplomat in the region at risk. This is a moment for vigilance—for Americans to speak up and speak out. No more Middle East wars. — Elizabeth Warren (@ewarren) January 3, 2020
Warren has previously been outspoken in her commitment to end the war in Afghanistan. Asked at a debate in September if she would withdraw American troops from that country even in the absence of a peace deal with the Taliban, Warren replied, “Yes.”
.@DavidMuir on the war in Afghanistan: "Would you keep that promise to bring the troops home, starting right now, with no deal with the Taliban?" Elizabeth Warren: "Yes." https://t.co/INdRXlIwFs #DemDebate pic.twitter.com/ltdwVF83de — ABC News (@ABC) September 13, 2019
“And I’ll tell you why,” she added. “What we’re doing right now in Afghanistan is not helping the safety and security of the United States, it is not helping the safety and security of the world, it is not helping the safety and security of Afghanistan. We need to bring our troops home and then we need to make a big shift: We cannot ask our military to keep solving problems that cannot be solved militarily. We’re not going to bomb our way to a solution.”
Some Sanders campaign aides and supporters, eager to draw votes from the left, cast Warren as insufficiently anti-war, even claiming that her proposal, last May, for the Pentagon to achieve net zero carbon emissions and her vote in favor of a recent military budgets was evidence that she is a secret warmonger.
While Warren appeared eager to focus on other issues on Saturday, with her Twitter feed turning to issues like the rights of disabled workers, the threat of white nationalists emboldened by Trump, and prosecuting bankers, Sanders stressed his plan to work with Rep. Ro Khanna on a bill that would cut off funding for any offensive action against Iran or Iranian officials.
Speaking on Saturday in Iowa, Sanders was met with cheers from supporters when he said that the first course of action when lawmakers return to Washington next week should be “for the Congress to take immediate steps to restrain President Trump from plunging our nation into yet another endless war.”
When I return to Washington next week along with the U.S. Senate, I believe the first course of action is for the Congress to take immediate steps to restrain President Trump from plunging our nation into yet another endless war. pic.twitter.com/dSDeFMmEYT — Bernie Sanders (@BernieSanders) January 4, 2020
“This country needs a whole lot of things, but one thing that we do not need is another war,” Sanders added. “We’ve got enough of those.”
Warren, unlike Sanders, routinely takes questions from reporters after her campaign appearances, pausing for a “gaggle” before taking selfies with supporters. On Saturday in Iowa, she said that, by killing Suleimani, “Donald Trump has taken us to the brink of war. We don’t need more war in the Middle East, we need to stop endless war in the Middle East.”
WATCH: @ewarren’s first on-camera reaction to the killing of Soleimani. @cheyennehaslett follows up by asking why the shift away from calling him a murderer. Warren pivots to instead talk about where Trump is taking this country, calling him “reckless”. pic.twitter.com/fqxGcPJDtS — Tara Prindiville (@taraprindiville) January 4, 2020
“We have been at war in this region for 20 years now, and it has meant thousands of American lives lost and huge costs imposed on our country,” Warren added. “It also means millions of people in the Middle East who have lost their lives, been injured, or displaced. We need to stop this endless war.”
Asked by Daniella Díaz of CNN if she would have given the order to assassinate the Iranian general, Warren said no and added that she would never have precipitated the current crisis, as Trump did, by withdrawing from the multinational nuclear agreement with Iran negotiated by Obama’s secretary of state, John Kerry.
To @DaniellaMicaela’s Q whether she would‘ve ordered the strike, @ewarren continued: “Even though the Iranians had been certified as adhering to the terms of the deal, even though our allies all stayed in the deal and wanted us to stay in the deal…Trump went off on his own…” https://t.co/fSn1mVPiCs pic.twitter.com/x9iajVAyuJ — Tara Prindiville (@taraprindiville) January 4, 2020
Warren also defended her description of the killing of the Iranian government official an “assassination,” one day after Mike Bloomberg, the former New York mayor, described Sanders’s use of the word as “an outrageous thing to say.”
Warren took question after question on Soleimani after not referencing the killing once during her town hall. When pushed on why she called it an assassination, @ewarren responds: “Yes, it is…he has ordered the assassination of a high-ranking gov official in the gov of Iran.” pic.twitter.com/nYHskBAxi4 — Tara Prindiville (@taraprindiville) January 4, 2020
According to Dave Weigel of the Washington Post, Warren dismissed unsourced claims from senior State Department officials that they had intelligence of an imminent threat to American lives posed by Suleimani, saying: “The administration has no credibility in truth-telling, either at home or around the world.”


theintercept--2020-01-04--Democratic Representative Pushed to Create a Massive Migrant Health Database That No One Wants

of migrant children in Border Patrol custody and proclaiming solidarity with health care providers , freshman Rep. Lauren Underwood , Democrat of Illinois , urged her House colleagues in late September to vote for a measure that she said would help with a public health emergency at the border .
“ The humanitarian and medical situation on our southern border has reached crisis levels , ” Underwood said .
She named 16-year-old Carlos Gregorio Hernandez Vasquez , who , last May , was diagnosed by a nurse practitioner in a crowded Border Patrol facility in McAllen , Texas , with @ @ @ @ @ @ @ While the nurse flagged his condition to agents , Carlos received no further medical attention .
The next morning , after an agonizing night , Carlos was dead , one of at least seven children to die in Border Patrol custody in the past year .
In her speech on the House floor , Underwood noted that “ medical care for these children has huge , unacceptable gaps.
” And since Carlos ’ s death , at least another seven adults have died in U.S. immigration detention centers .
Yet the bill that @ @ @ @ @ @ @ any improvements in medical care .
Instead , it would create a mammoth health and biometric database — accessible to immigration agencies known to create false records that the government later uses against migrants , who are unable to challenge or even see these tainted reports in asylum and other immigration proceedings .
Agencies also use migrants ’ personal information to track them down for deportation .
Underwood ’ s bill , the U.S. Border Patrol Medical Standards Screening Act , currently under consideration in the Senate Judiciary Committee , directs Customs and @ @ @ @ @ @ @ create an electronic health record system accessible to all agencies working in immigration enforcement .
The bill does not specify what personal information would be collected and shared .
It does not mandate improved care , better oversight of abusive or negligent officers , nor alleviate the unsanitary and dangerous conditions in detention centers .
Instead , it authorizes interrogations at the border by federal agents seeking biometric and narrative data under the expansive “ health ” rubric .
It is opposed by the Department of Homeland Security and by immigrant rights groups @ @ @ @ @ @ @ proposed database would be whichever technology firms get the contracts to build and maintain it .
In fact , U.S. agencies are already digitally storing all sorts of migrant data , including medical information .
In response to questions from The Intercept , a CBP spokesperson said the agency “ is currently developing an electronic health record system to facilitate the collection , retention , review and exchange of medical data.
” This would seem to refer to data collected by health-care professionals treating people , far more restricted than Underwood ’ s @ @ @ @ @ @ @ health data ” of all migrants .
Immigrant rights advocates see health data as yet another piece of a digital surveillance dragnet .
In a 2018 report , the immigrant advocacy group Mijente wrote that U.S. Immigrations and Customs Enforcement is seeking to “ organize mass personal information … for surveilling , arresting and deporting immigrants.
” The report explains how the Department of Homeland Security is developing a new cloud-based biometric system and relying on private tech companies ’ storage capacity and expertise to more efficiently track and target immigrants .
A @ @ @ @ @ @ @ scours a vast network of databases to target immigrants .
Homeland Security agencies , working in concert with private corporations , already share biometric and other personal information with at least seven different companies , including Amazon , Google , IBM , Lockheed , Microsoft , Palantir , and Salesforce .
The backstory to Underwood ’ s bill raises other red flags .
It was drafted by Underwood herself , seemingly without the support or even knowledge of prominent immigrant rights attorneys and organizations , and with no experts testifying on it in @ @ @ @ @ @ @ with the bill was overheard on speakerphone , as The Intercept was interviewing a colleague , saying Underwood wrote it at the suggestion of “ a contractor.
” Underwood ’ s spokesperson denied this and claims she “ came up with the idea herself while on a Congressional delegation visit to the border.
” The bill has also never been properly budgeted , despite a potential price tag in the billions .
House rules require a budget analysis for each bill , but that never happened with the CBP legislation .
Instead , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ where Underwood introduced the bill , used the budget analysis for an unrelated 2002 bill , over objections from Republicans .
The bill breezed through the House with no discussion of privacy or civil rights concerns .
Underwood claimed that “ health officials at the border , ” including officials from Homeland Security , had told her “ that one of the most urgent solutions they need is an electronic health record that can be used by everyone providing medical care at the border.
” But Rep. Mike Rogers , R-Al.
, disputed @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Homeland Security had “ issued an announcement that they oppose this piece of legislation.
” A House staffer stated that Underwood ’ s claim that Homeland Security supported her bill “ came from an individual she met on a border trip who allegedly said it would be easy and cheap to implement an interoperable health records system .
It was never made clear to me if that person was a DHS employee , contractor , or a medical volunteer.
” At the same time , the House has passed two other bills : @ @ @ @ @ @ @ and Border Protection Custody Act introduced by Democrat Rep. Raul Ruiz of California , and the Homeland Security Improvement Act introduced by Democrat Rep. Veronica Escobar of Texas .
Both were written in collaboration with immigrant-rights groups .
They mandate screening and treatment of those in CBP custody “ by a licensed medical professional , ” an oversight panel , review of ICE and CBP ’ s compliance with standards of care , as well as yearly evaluations .
Ruiz , who has worked as an emergency physician , told The Intercept , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to help ensure that people in the custody of the U.S. government are treated humanely and that children aren ’ t dying while in the custody and responsibility of CBP.
” Ruiz ’ s bill has been endorsed by 14 medical groups , while the American Civil Liberties Union has praised Escobar ’ s bill , saying it would provide “ meaningful accountability.
” No such endorsements or plaudits have been publicly expressed about Underwood ’ s bill .
Asked by The Intercept to name a single group that supported her bill , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ consult a colleague , but produced no names and did not respond to a follow-up email .
have shown that electronic health records do not improve health outcomes , including for diabetes , HIV emergency room screening , and surgery .
Carlos Hernandez Vasquez and at least two other children last year , for example , were diagnosed with the flu and subsequently died , even though Border Patrol already knew of their medical problems .
The underlying problem is holding children in jails and not adhering to even the substandard protocols of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ report , published just days after Underwood ’ s bill was first introduced , highlighted dangerous overcrowding and prolonged detention in cells where Border Patrol failed to provide people with sufficient food , showers , or flushing toilets .
The report noted that some adults were kept in standing-room-only cells for up to a month .
Underwood invoked these horrors as her bill ’ s rationale , but a billion-dollar database will not fix such conditions , and experts worry that it could make things worse for migrants .
Jacinta Gonzalez , field @ @ @ @ @ @ @ was “ expanding powers of surveillance for DHS , an agency that has proven time and time again to not be able to follow constitutional rules , much less protect human and civil rights.
” She saw the database as “ basically setting up a system of coercion without enough information or consent about what is going to happen with your personal information.
” Immigration agents could use information obtained under duress at first contact with the Border Patrol to later track down migrants , share it with regimes from which the migrants @ @ @ @ @ @ @ details — inaccurately entered or mischaracterized later — contradict information on an asylum claim or other immigration proceeding .
Such conflicting information could be devastating to assessments of credibility by immigration judges , who tend to defer to official U.S. government information , even when it is often shown to be inaccurate .
The Washington Post recently reported on ICE agents potentially screening biometric data from adults seeking to claim migrant children from government custody .
The plan , developed by White House immigration adviser Stephen Miller , would have ICE use that @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , an order that clearly contravenes laws restricting the use of refugee programs for immigration enforcement .
“ CBP cloud info is clearly not safe , or not being used as intended , ” Gonzalez said .
Paromita Shah , executive director of Just Futures Law , said that Underwood ’ s bill “ sounds innocuous on paper , that the data is objective and untainted .
But data is political , and data is valuable.
” Shah noted that “ this kind of data is never given ” to the person it @ @ @ @ @ @ @ t have access or power over it.
” There is already precedent for immigration authorities relying on biometric databases to make immigration decisions based on flawed entries , or otherwise misusing personal diagnostic data .
Take the Biometric Identification Transnational Migration Alert Program , or BITMAP , which since 2016 has been sucking in data from children who have crossed paths with immigration authorities outside of the United States .
Often that data — collected from , say , unaccompanied Bangladeshi teenagers in migrant camps in Ecuador or Panama — is unreliable , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
Yet ICE has used it to declare such teenagers adults and deny them protections afforded to child migrants .
In one case of a child seeking asylum and challenging ICE ’ s use of bad information shared across the BITMAP system , federal Judge Diane Humetewa in 2018 ruled against ICE , declaring that “ these records appear to be questionable at best.
” In another example , the Deportation Research Clinic at Northwestern ( run by Jacqueline Stevens , one of the authors of this piece ) has obtained documents showing @ @ @ @ @ @ @ based on X-rays of third molars — obtained without consent and in violation of the law and orders by several federal judges .
The government ’ s reliance on databases reduces people and their stories into data that is inaccessible to the individual and almost impossible to dispute .
Shah , of Just Futures Law , said that these databases are “ rarely about truth trading .
Data collection is often a push to a certain conclusion.
” herself as a hard-working medical care provider , even appearing in a campaign ad in @ @ @ @ @ @ @ nurse ” regularly peppers her speeches , as was the case when she pitched her database bill on the House floor , a riff her colleagues echoed .
“ As a nurse , as a trained nurse , I appreciated the astuteness in which she looked at this , ” said Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee , D-Texas , as she rose to support the bill .
Although Underwood obtained degrees and certificates in nursing and public health , she has never been paid to care for patients .
During her seven years in @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Services , she worked on health insurance , a job that included meeting with corporations seeking advantageous terms for Medicaid reimbursements .
After leaving her position with the government , she went to work for an Illinois Medicaid managed care firm as senior director for strategic and regulatory affairs , jargon that typically means “ lobbyist , ” although she did not register as such .
The firm employing Underwood , NextLevel Health , has been the subject of an investigation into why Illinois was directing Medicaid recipients to the company at a @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ratings .
The state of Illinois persistently gives NextLevel its lowest marks and NextLevel has also been fined for improper record keeping .
Underwood did not respond to questions about whether she communicated with Illinois state officials — which would define her as a lobbyist — and about salary discrepancies in her financial disclosure to the House about her work for NextLevel .
Underwood , endorsed by President Barack Obama , whose friends run NextLevel , benefitted as he did from the Illinois machine and raised money from ordinary people who thought she @ @ @ @ @ @ @ from the Pritzker family and other billionaires , including over $ 1.6 million from Michael Bloomberg .
The $ 325,000 that Underwood raised for the 2018 primary was about double that of her closest rival and more than the combined receipts of her four Democratic opponents .
All told , Underwood raised almost $ 5 million — more than twice the funds of the incumbent Republican .
That business-friendly posture may have been why House leadership named Underwood vice chair of the Committee on Homeland Security in 2019 , despite her campaign ’ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Republicans were in the House majority , several Democrats on the committee had voted against government surveillance programs , including ranking member , Rep. Bennie Thompson of Mississippi , who has challenged the BITMAP database .
In his dissent to a bill that , had it passed , would have elevated a Homeland Security program into law , Thompson noted , “ Basic questions about the program remain unanswered .
How are international partners selected ?
After checks against databases , what does the U.S. government do with the vast majority of records @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ’ s seniority put him in line for his current position as the committee ’ s chair , but a less skeptical vice chair like Underwood would seem to benefit the companies and major donors angling for expensive contracts for surveillance database programs .
One of those corporations is General Dynamics , the world ’ s sixth largest military contractor and the federal government ’ s second–largest supplier of information technology services .
General Dynamics Information Technology handles juvenile case management services for the Office of Refugee Resettlement .
In 2018 , the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ CSRA , the firm that contracts with Homeland Security to operate BITMAP .
The day before Underwood pushed her CBP health database bill through the Homeland Security Committee , General Dynamics kicked $ 60,000 into the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee , or DCCC , which is controlled by Democratic Rep. Cheri Bustos of Illinois , a former corporate health care executive and Underwood booster .
General Dynamics also paid lobbyists almost $ 8 million over the first nine months of 2019 .
The company disclosed that in the timeframe Underwood was introducing the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ influence “ funding and issues related to Cyber programs ; information systems ; telecommunications ; technology equipment ; infrastructure ; support and services ; border security technologies ; data centers , ” indicating CBP among their target customers .
Underwood did not respond to requests for comment about her relationship with General Dynamics and other major corporations who may stand to benefit from the introduction of new medical databases .
In 2018 , shortly after digitally submitting inaccurate financial data to the House Clerk , Underwood told a journalist , “ A representative @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , and honest .
”

Invoking the deaths of migrant children in Border Patrol custody and proclaiming solidarity with health care providers, freshman Rep. Lauren Underwood, Democrat of Illinois, urged her House colleagues in late September to vote for a measure that she said would help with a public health emergency at the border. “The humanitarian and medical situation on our southern border has reached crisis levels,” Underwood said.
She named 16-year-old Carlos Gregorio Hernandez Vasquez, who, last May, was diagnosed by a nurse practitioner in a crowded Border Patrol facility in McAllen, Texas, with the flu and a 103-degree fever. While the nurse flagged his condition to agents, Carlos received no further medical attention. The next morning, after an agonizing night, Carlos was dead, one of at least seven children to die in Border Patrol custody in the past year.
In her speech on the House floor, Underwood noted that “medical care for these children has huge, unacceptable gaps.” And since Carlos’s death, at least another seven adults have died in U.S. immigration detention centers.
Yet the bill that Underwood was pushing would not actually obligate any improvements in medical care. Instead, it would create a mammoth health and biometric database — accessible to immigration agencies known to create false records that the government later uses against migrants, who are unable to challenge or even see these tainted reports in asylum and other immigration proceedings. Agencies also use migrants’ personal information to track them down for deportation.
Underwood’s bill, the U.S. Border Patrol Medical Standards Screening Act, currently under consideration in the Senate Judiciary Committee, directs Customs and Border Protection, or CBP, to create an electronic health record system accessible to all agencies working in immigration enforcement. The bill does not specify what personal information would be collected and shared. It does not mandate improved care, better oversight of abusive or negligent officers, nor alleviate the unsanitary and dangerous conditions in detention centers. Instead, it authorizes interrogations at the border by federal agents seeking biometric and narrative data under the expansive “health” rubric.
It is opposed by the Department of Homeland Security and by immigrant rights groups. The only obvious beneficiaries of the proposed database would be whichever technology firms get the contracts to build and maintain it.
In fact, U.S. agencies are already digitally storing all sorts of migrant data, including medical information. In response to questions from The Intercept, a CBP spokesperson said the agency “is currently developing an electronic health record system to facilitate the collection, retention, review and exchange of medical data.” This would seem to refer to data collected by health-care professionals treating people, far more restricted than Underwood’s mandate for CBP to collect the “health data” of all migrants.
Immigrant rights advocates see health data as yet another piece of a digital surveillance dragnet.
Immigrant rights advocates see health data as yet another piece of a digital surveillance dragnet. In a 2018 report, the immigrant advocacy group Mijente wrote that U.S. Immigrations and Customs Enforcement is seeking to “organize mass personal information … for surveilling, arresting and deporting immigrants.” The report explains how the Department of Homeland Security is developing a new cloud-based biometric system and relying on private tech companies’ storage capacity and expertise to more efficiently track and target immigrants. A recent Intercept article similarly highlighted how ICE scours a vast network of databases to target immigrants. Homeland Security agencies, working in concert with private corporations, already share biometric and other personal information with at least seven different companies, including Amazon, Google, IBM, Lockheed, Microsoft, Palantir, and Salesforce.
The backstory to Underwood’s bill raises other red flags. It was drafted by Underwood herself, seemingly without the support or even knowledge of prominent immigrant rights attorneys and organizations, and with no experts testifying on it in a committee hearing. One staffer familiar with the bill was overheard on speakerphone, as The Intercept was interviewing a colleague, saying Underwood wrote it at the suggestion of “a contractor.” Underwood’s spokesperson denied this and claims she “came up with the idea herself while on a Congressional delegation visit to the border.”
The bill has also never been properly budgeted, despite a potential price tag in the billions. House rules require a budget analysis for each bill, but that never happened with the CBP legislation. Instead, the House Committee on Homeland Security, where Underwood introduced the bill, used the budget analysis for an unrelated 2002 bill, over objections from Republicans. The bill breezed through the House with no discussion of privacy or civil rights concerns.
Underwood claimed that “health officials at the border,” including officials from Homeland Security, had told her “that one of the most urgent solutions they need is an electronic health record that can be used by everyone providing medical care at the border.” But Rep. Mike Rogers, R-Al., disputed this, saying on the floor that Homeland Security had “issued an announcement that they oppose this piece of legislation.” A House staffer stated that Underwood’s claim that Homeland Security supported her bill “came from an individual she met on a border trip who allegedly said it would be easy and cheap to implement an interoperable health records system. It was never made clear to me if that person was a DHS employee, contractor, or a medical volunteer.”
At the same time, the House has passed two other bills: the Humanitarian Standards for Individuals in Customs and Border Protection Custody Act introduced by Democrat Rep. Raul Ruiz of California, and the Homeland Security Improvement Act introduced by Democrat Rep. Veronica Escobar of Texas. Both were written in collaboration with immigrant-rights groups. They mandate screening and treatment of those in CBP custody “by a licensed medical professional,” an oversight panel, review of ICE and CBP’s compliance with standards of care, as well as yearly evaluations. Ruiz, who has worked as an emergency physician, told The Intercept, “I wrote this public health-focused bill to help ensure that people in the custody of the U.S. government are treated humanely and that children aren’t dying while in the custody and responsibility of CBP.”
Ruiz’s bill has been endorsed by 14 medical groups, while the American Civil Liberties Union has praised Escobar’s bill, saying it would provide “meaningful accountability.” No such endorsements or plaudits have been publicly expressed about Underwood’s bill. Asked by The Intercept to name a single group that supported her bill, Underwood’s staff requested time to consult a colleague, but produced no names and did not respond to a follow-up email.
Photo: Carolyn Van Houten/The Washington Post via Getty Images
Public health studies have shown that electronic health records do not improve health outcomes, including for diabetes, HIV emergency room screening, and surgery. Carlos Hernandez Vasquez and at least two other children last year, for example, were diagnosed with the flu and subsequently died, even though Border Patrol already knew of their medical problems. The underlying problem is holding children in jails and not adhering to even the substandard protocols of Border Patrol facilities. An internal government report, published just days after Underwood’s bill was first introduced, highlighted dangerous overcrowding and prolonged detention in cells where Border Patrol failed to provide people with sufficient food, showers, or flushing toilets. The report noted that some adults were kept in standing-room-only cells for up to a month.
Underwood invoked these horrors as her bill’s rationale, but a billion-dollar database will not fix such conditions, and experts worry that it could make things worse for migrants. Jacinta Gonzalez, field director of Mijente, said the bill was “expanding powers of surveillance for DHS, an agency that has proven time and time again to not be able to follow constitutional rules, much less protect human and civil rights.” She saw the database as “basically setting up a system of coercion without enough information or consent about what is going to happen with your personal information.”
Immigration agents could use information obtained under duress at first contact with the Border Patrol to later track down migrants, share it with regimes from which the migrants are fleeing, or argue that certain details — inaccurately entered or mischaracterized later — contradict information on an asylum claim or other immigration proceeding. Such conflicting information could be devastating to assessments of credibility by immigration judges, who tend to defer to official U.S. government information, even when it is often shown to be inaccurate.
The Washington Post recently reported on ICE agents potentially screening biometric data from adults seeking to claim migrant children from government custody. The plan, developed by White House immigration adviser Stephen Miller, would have ICE use that data to make arrests and deport people, an order that clearly contravenes laws restricting the use of refugee programs for immigration enforcement. “CBP cloud info is clearly not safe, or not being used as intended,” Gonzalez said.
“CBP cloud info is clearly not safe, or not being used as intended.”
Paromita Shah, executive director of Just Futures Law, said that Underwood’s bill “sounds innocuous on paper, that the data is objective and untainted. But data is political, and data is valuable.” Shah noted that “this kind of data is never given” to the person it belongs to. “They don’t have access or power over it.”
There is already precedent for immigration authorities relying on biometric databases to make immigration decisions based on flawed entries, or otherwise misusing personal diagnostic data. Take the Biometric Identification Transnational Migration Alert Program, or BITMAP, which since 2016 has been sucking in data from children who have crossed paths with immigration authorities outside of the United States. Often that data — collected from, say, unaccompanied Bangladeshi teenagers in migrant camps in Ecuador or Panama — is unreliable, based on bogus passports or other misinformation. Yet ICE has used it to declare such teenagers adults and deny them protections afforded to child migrants. In one case of a child seeking asylum and challenging ICE’s use of bad information shared across the BITMAP system, federal Judge Diane Humetewa in 2018 ruled against ICE, declaring that “these records appear to be questionable at best.”
In another example, the Deportation Research Clinic at Northwestern (run by Jacqueline Stevens, one of the authors of this piece) has obtained documents showing agencies regularly using scientifically unsound age assessments based on X-rays of third molars — obtained without consent and in violation of the law and orders by several federal judges. The government’s reliance on databases reduces people and their stories into data that is inaccessible to the individual and almost impossible to dispute. Shah, of Just Futures Law, said that these databases are “rarely about truth trading. Data collection is often a push to a certain conclusion.”
Rep. Lauren Underwood speaks to members of the press ahead of the State of the Union address in the chamber of the U.S. House of Representatives on Feb. 5, 2019, in Washington, D.C. Photo: Zach Gibson/Getty Images
Underwood frequently presents herself as a hard-working medical care provider, even appearing in a campaign ad in scrubs. The phrase “as a nurse” regularly peppers her speeches, as was the case when she pitched her database bill on the House floor, a riff her colleagues echoed. “As a nurse, as a trained nurse, I appreciated the astuteness in which she looked at this,” said Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee, D-Texas, as she rose to support the bill.
Although Underwood obtained degrees and certificates in nursing and public health, she has never been paid to care for patients. During her seven years in the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, she worked on health insurance, a job that included meeting with corporations seeking advantageous terms for Medicaid reimbursements. After leaving her position with the government, she went to work for an Illinois Medicaid managed care firm as senior director for strategic and regulatory affairs, jargon that typically means “lobbyist,” although she did not register as such.
The firm employing Underwood, NextLevel Health, has been the subject of an investigation into why Illinois was directing Medicaid recipients to the company at a rate incommensurate with its size and official ratings. The state of Illinois persistently gives NextLevel its lowest marks and NextLevel has also been fined for improper record keeping. Underwood did not respond to questions about whether she communicated with Illinois state officials — which would define her as a lobbyist — and about salary discrepancies in her financial disclosure to the House about her work for NextLevel.
Underwood, endorsed by President Barack Obama, whose friends run NextLevel, benefitted as he did from the Illinois machine and raised money from ordinary people who thought she worked in scrubs, as well as from the Pritzker family and other billionaires, including over $1.6 million from Michael Bloomberg. The $325,000 that Underwood raised for the 2018 primary was about double that of her closest rival and more than the combined receipts of her four Democratic opponents. All told, Underwood raised almost $5 million — more than twice the funds of the incumbent Republican.
That business-friendly posture may have been why House leadership named Underwood vice chair of the Committee on Homeland Security in 2019, despite her campaign’s focus on health policy.
When Republicans were in the House majority, several Democrats on the committee had voted against government surveillance programs, including ranking member, Rep. Bennie Thompson of Mississippi, who has challenged the BITMAP database. In his dissent to a bill that, had it passed, would have elevated a Homeland Security program into law, Thompson noted, “Basic questions about the program remain unanswered. How are international partners selected? After checks against databases, what does the U.S. government do with the vast majority of records it collects on migrants?”
Thompson’s seniority put him in line for his current position as the committee’s chair, but a less skeptical vice chair like Underwood would seem to benefit the companies and major donors angling for expensive contracts for surveillance database programs.
One of those corporations is General Dynamics, the world’s sixth largest military contractor and the federal government’s second–largest supplier of information technology services. General Dynamics Information Technology handles juvenile case management services for the Office of Refugee Resettlement. In 2018, the company spent $9 billion to buy CSRA, the firm that contracts with Homeland Security to operate BITMAP.
The day before Underwood pushed her CBP health database bill through the Homeland Security Committee, General Dynamics kicked $60,000 into the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, or DCCC, which is controlled by Democratic Rep. Cheri Bustos of Illinois, a former corporate health care executive and Underwood booster. General Dynamics also paid lobbyists almost $8 million over the first nine months of 2019. The company disclosed that in the timeframe Underwood was introducing the CBP bill, General Dynamics sought to influence “funding and issues related to Cyber programs; information systems; telecommunications; technology equipment; infrastructure; support and services; border security technologies; data centers,” indicating CBP among their target customers.
Underwood did not respond to requests for comment about her relationship with General Dynamics and other major corporations who may stand to benefit from the introduction of new medical databases. In 2018, shortly after digitally submitting inaccurate financial data to the House Clerk, Underwood told a journalist, “A representative is supposed to be transparent, accessible, and honest.”


theintercept--2020-01-03--With Suleimani Assassination, Trump Is Doing the Bidding of Washington’s Most Vile Cabal

focus for three years of the Trump presidency has centered around “ Russia collusion ” and impeachment , the most dangerous collusion of all was happening right out in the open — the Trump/Saudi/Israel/UAE drive to war with Iran .
On August 3 , 2016 — just three months before Donald Trump would win the Electoral College vote and ascend to power — Blackwater founder Erik Prince arranged a meeting at Trump Tower .
For decades , Prince had been agitating for a war with Iran and , as early as 2010 , had developed a fantastical proposal for using @ @ @ @ @ @ @ meeting was George Nader , an American citizen who had a long history of being a quiet emissary for the United States in the Middle East .
Nader , who had also worked for Blackwater and Prince , was a convicted pedophile in the Czech Republic and is facing similar allegations in the United States .
Nader worked as an adviser for the Emirati royals and has close ties to Mohammed bin Salman , the Saudi crown prince .
There was also an Israeli at the Trump Tower meeting : Joel Zamel .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ social media manipulation campaign to the Trump team .
Zamel ’ s company , Psy-Group , boasts of employing former Israeli intelligence operatives .
Nader and Zamel were joined by Donald Trump Jr .
According to the New York Times , the purpose of the meeting was “ primarily to offer help to the Trump team , and it forged relationships between the men and Trump insiders that would develop over the coming months , past the election and well into President Trump ’ s first year in office.
” One major common @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the participants in this Trump Tower meeting : regime change in Iran .
Trump campaigned on belligerence toward Iran and trashing the Obama-led Iran nuclear deal , and he has followed through on those threats , filling his administration with the most vile , hawkish figures in the U.S. national security establishment .
After appointing notorious warmonger John Bolton as national security adviser , Trump fired him last September .
But despite reports that Trump had soured on Bolton because of his interventionist posture toward Iran , Bolton ’ s firing merely opened @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Pompeo to take over the administration ’ s Iran policy at the State Department .
Now Pompeo is the public face of the Suleimani assassination , while for his part , the fired Bolton didn ’ t want to be left out of the gruesome victory lap : Trump , who had no idea who Qassim Suleimani was until it was explained to him live on the radio by conservative journalist Hugh Hewitt in 2015 , didn ’ t seem to need many details to know that he wanted to crush the Iranian @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to power in 2001 after the election of George W. Bush with the goal of regime change in Iraq , Trump in his bumbling way assembled a team of extremists who viewed him as their best chance of wiping the Islamic Republic of Iran off the map .
While Barack Obama provided crucial military and intelligence support for Saudi Arabia ’ s scorched earth campaign in Yemen , which killed untold numbers of civilians , Trump escalated that mass murder in a blatant effort to draw Iran militarily into a conflict .
That @ @ @ @ @ @ @ and Israel , and it coincided neatly with the neoconservative dreams of overthrowing the Iranian government .
As the U.S. and Saudi Arabia intensified their military attacks in Yemen , Iran began to insert itself more and more forcefully into Yemeni affairs , though Tehran was careful not to be tricked into offering this Trump/Saudi/UAE/Israel coalition a justification for wider war .
The assassination of Suleimani — a popular figure in Iran who is viewed as one of the major drivers of ISIS ’ s defeat in Iraq — was one of only @ @ @ @ @ @ @ could have taken that would almost certainly lead to a war with Iran .
This assassination , reportedly ordered directly by Trump , was advocated by the most dangerous and extreme players in the U.S. foreign policy establishment with that exact intent .
Assassination has been a central component of U.S. policy for many decades , though it has been whitewashed and normalized throughout history , most recently with Obama ’ s favored term , “ targeted killings.
” The U.S. Congress has intentionally never legislated the issue of assassination .
Lawmakers have @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ” While every president since Gerald Ford has upheld an executive order banning assassinations by U.S. personnel , they have each carried out assassinations with little to no congressional outcry .
In 1976 , following Church Committee recommendations regarding allegations of assassination plots carried out by U.S. intelligence agencies , Ford signed an executive order banning “ political assassination.
” Jimmy Carter subsequently issued a new order strengthening the prohibition by dropping the word “ political ” and extending it to include persons “ employed by or acting on behalf of the United @ @ @ @ @ @ @ signed Executive Order 12333 , which remains in effect today .
The language seems clear enough : “ No person employed by or acting on behalf of the United States Government shall engage in , or conspire to engage in , assassination.
” As I wrote in August 2017 , reflecting on our Drone Papers series from two years earlier , “ The Obama administration , by institutionalizing a policy of drone-based killings of individuals judged to pose a threat to national security — without indictment or trial , through secret processes — @ @ @ @ @ @ @ thus to Donald Trump , a policy of assassination , in direct violation of Executive Order 12333 and , moreover , the Fifth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution .
To date , at least seven U.S. citizens are known to have been killed under this policy , including a 16-year-old boy .
Only one American , the radical preacher Anwar al-Awlaki , was said to have been the ‘ intended target ’ of a strike.
” While many Democratic politicians are offering their concerns about the consequences of Suleimani ’ s assassination , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ how atrocious Suleimani was .
Framing his assassination that way ultimately benefits the extremist cabal of foreign policy hawks who agitated for this very moment to arrive .
There ’ s no justification for assassinating foreign officials , including Suleimani .
This is an aggressive act of war , an offensive act committed by the U.S. on the sovereign territory of a third country , Iraq .
This assassination and the potential for a war it raises are , unfortunately , consistent with more than half a century of U.S. aggression against Iran @ @ @ @ @ @ @ many Democrats have told the country that Trump is the gravest threat to a democratic system we have faced .
And yet many leading Democrats have voted consistently to give Trump unprecedented military budgets and surveillance powers .
Five months ago , California Democratic Rep. Ro Khanna offered an amendment to the National Defense Authorization Act that would have prohibited this very type of action , but it was removed from the final bill .
“ Any member who voted for the NDAA — a blank check — can ’ t now express @ @ @ @ @ @ @ war in the Middle East , ” Khanna wrote on Twitter after Suleimani ’ s assassination .
“ My Amendment , which was stripped , would have cut off $ $ for any offensive attack against Iran including against officials like Soleimani.
” Trump is responsible for whatever comes next .
But time and again , the worst foreign policy atrocities of his presidency have been enabled by the very politicians who claim to want him removed from office .

While the media focus for three years of the Trump presidency has centered around “Russia collusion” and impeachment, the most dangerous collusion of all was happening right out in the open — the Trump/Saudi/Israel/UAE drive to war with Iran.
On August 3, 2016 — just three months before Donald Trump would win the Electoral College vote and ascend to power — Blackwater founder Erik Prince arranged a meeting at Trump Tower. For decades, Prince had been agitating for a war with Iran and, as early as 2010, had developed a fantastical proposal for using mercenaries to wage it.
At this meeting was George Nader, an American citizen who had a long history of being a quiet emissary for the United States in the Middle East. Nader, who had also worked for Blackwater and Prince, was a convicted pedophile in the Czech Republic and is facing similar allegations in the United States. Nader worked as an adviser for the Emirati royals and has close ties to Mohammed bin Salman, the Saudi crown prince.
There was also an Israeli at the Trump Tower meeting: Joel Zamel. He was there supposedly pitching a multimillion-dollar social media manipulation campaign to the Trump team. Zamel’s company, Psy-Group, boasts of employing former Israeli intelligence operatives. Nader and Zamel were joined by Donald Trump Jr. According to the New York Times, the purpose of the meeting was “primarily to offer help to the Trump team, and it forged relationships between the men and Trump insiders that would develop over the coming months, past the election and well into President Trump’s first year in office.”
One major common goal ran through the agendas of all the participants in this Trump Tower meeting: regime change in Iran. Trump campaigned on belligerence toward Iran and trashing the Obama-led Iran nuclear deal, and he has followed through on those threats, filling his administration with the most vile, hawkish figures in the U.S. national security establishment. After appointing notorious warmonger John Bolton as national security adviser, Trump fired him last September. But despite reports that Trump had soured on Bolton because of his interventionist posture toward Iran, Bolton’s firing merely opened the door for the equally belligerent Mike Pompeo to take over the administration’s Iran policy at the State Department. Now Pompeo is the public face of the Suleimani assassination, while for his part, the fired Bolton didn’t want to be left out of the gruesome victory lap:
Congratulations to all involved in eliminating Qassem Soleimani. Long in the making, this was a decisive blow against Iran's malign Quds Force activities worldwide. Hope this is the first step to regime change in Tehran. — John Bolton (@AmbJohnBolton) January 3, 2020
Trump, who had no idea who Qassim Suleimani was until it was explained to him live on the radio by conservative journalist Hugh Hewitt in 2015, didn’t seem to need many details to know that he wanted to crush the Iranian state.
Much as the neoconservatives came to power in 2001 after the election of George W. Bush with the goal of regime change in Iraq, Trump in his bumbling way assembled a team of extremists who viewed him as their best chance of wiping the Islamic Republic of Iran off the map.
While Barack Obama provided crucial military and intelligence support for Saudi Arabia’s scorched earth campaign in Yemen, which killed untold numbers of civilians, Trump escalated that mass murder in a blatant effort to draw Iran militarily into a conflict. That was the agenda of the gulf monarchies and Israel, and it coincided neatly with the neoconservative dreams of overthrowing the Iranian government. As the U.S. and Saudi Arabia intensified their military attacks in Yemen, Iran began to insert itself more and more forcefully into Yemeni affairs, though Tehran was careful not to be tricked into offering this Trump/Saudi/UAE/Israel coalition a justification for wider war.
Photo: Tauseef Mustafa/AFP/Getty Images
The assassination of Suleimani — a popular figure in Iran who is viewed as one of the major drivers of ISIS’s defeat in Iraq — was one of only a handful of actions that the U.S. could have taken that would almost certainly lead to a war with Iran. This assassination, reportedly ordered directly by Trump, was advocated by the most dangerous and extreme players in the U.S. foreign policy establishment with that exact intent.
Assassination has been a central component of U.S. policy for many decades, though it has been whitewashed and normalized throughout history, most recently with Obama’s favored term, “targeted killings.” The U.S. Congress has intentionally never legislated the issue of assassination. Lawmakers have avoided even defining the word “assassination.” While every president since Gerald Ford has upheld an executive order banning assassinations by U.S. personnel, they have each carried out assassinations with little to no congressional outcry.
In 1976, following Church Committee recommendations regarding allegations of assassination plots carried out by U.S. intelligence agencies, Ford signed an executive order banning “political assassination.” Jimmy Carter subsequently issued a new order strengthening the prohibition by dropping the word “political” and extending it to include persons “employed by or acting on behalf of the United States.” In 1981, Ronald Reagan signed Executive Order 12333, which remains in effect today. The language seems clear enough: “No person employed by or acting on behalf of the United States Government shall engage in, or conspire to engage in, assassination.”
As I wrote in August 2017, reflecting on our Drone Papers series from two years earlier, “The Obama administration, by institutionalizing a policy of drone-based killings of individuals judged to pose a threat to national security — without indictment or trial, through secret processes — bequeathed to our political culture, and thus to Donald Trump, a policy of assassination, in direct violation of Executive Order 12333 and, moreover, the Fifth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution. To date, at least seven U.S. citizens are known to have been killed under this policy, including a 16-year-old boy. Only one American, the radical preacher Anwar al-Awlaki, was said to have been the ‘intended target’ of a strike.”
There’s no justification for assassinating foreign officials, including Suleimani.
While many Democratic politicians are offering their concerns about the consequences of Suleimani’s assassination, they are prefacing it with remarks about how atrocious Suleimani was. Framing his assassination that way ultimately benefits the extremist cabal of foreign policy hawks who agitated for this very moment to arrive. There’s no justification for assassinating foreign officials, including Suleimani. This is an aggressive act of war, an offensive act committed by the U.S. on the sovereign territory of a third country, Iraq. This assassination and the potential for a war it raises are, unfortunately, consistent with more than half a century of U.S. aggression against Iran and Iraq.
For three years, many Democrats have told the country that Trump is the gravest threat to a democratic system we have faced. And yet many leading Democrats have voted consistently to give Trump unprecedented military budgets and surveillance powers.
Five months ago, California Democratic Rep. Ro Khanna offered an amendment to the National Defense Authorization Act that would have prohibited this very type of action, but it was removed from the final bill. “Any member who voted for the NDAA — a blank check — can’t now express dismay that Trump may have launched another war in the Middle East,” Khanna wrote on Twitter after Suleimani’s assassination. “My Amendment, which was stripped, would have cut off $$ for any offensive attack against Iran including against officials like Soleimani.”
Trump is responsible for whatever comes next. But time and again, the worst foreign policy atrocities of his presidency have been enabled by the very politicians who claim to want him removed from office.


theintercept--2020-01-03--The Trump Administration Just Killed Iran’s Most Famous Military Commander. We’re Not Ready for What

The Trump Administration Just Killed Iran’s Most Famous Military Commander. We’re Not Ready for What’s Next.

The reported airstrike last night has taken this bitter conflict to an altogether new level .
The killing of Suleimani , along with several other top Iraqi Shia militia leaders , is the single most significant lethal operation since the joint U.S.-Israeli assassination of Lebanese Hezbollah operative Imad Mughniyeh in Damascus in 2008 .
Until his death last night in an airstrike near Baghdad International Airport , Maj. Gen. Qassim Suleimani was the United States ’ s most formidable adversary in the Middle East .
As commander of the Quds Force , the external operations branch of the Islamic Revolutionary @ @ @ @ @ @ @ proxy war against the U.S. and its allies across Iraq and the region .
It was a conflict in which the Iranian side has largely come out on top , as their own leaked internal documents have shown .
“ This seems like a very shortsighted decision .
I can ’ t imagine that much thought went into it besides the perception that killing Suleimani would look like a big victory , ” said Dina Esfandiary , an expert on Iran at the Century Foundation .
“ The Iranians will definitely respond , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ an all-out war , which they know they would lose.
” Although that claim is doubtless true , the statement did not indicate what the United States or its allies expect will occur in the wake of this extreme step .
Despite their differences with Iran , neither the Obama nor the George W. Bush administrations thought it wise to kill Iran ’ s best-known military commander .
It is also perhaps the most reckless foreign policy action by President Donald Trump since he took office .
Unlike Mughniyeh or other nonstate militants @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the years , Suleimani was a ranking official of a foreign government .
He was a popular figure among Iranian nationalists whose reputation as a battlefield commander in Iraq and Syria had been publicly promoted by a regime looking to boost its flagging domestic popularity .
His killing seems to mark the beginning of direct hostilities between the United States and Iran , with top officials apparently not off-limits for violence .
Late last night , the Department of Defense issued a statement claiming responsibility for Suleimani ’ s killing , saying that @ @ @ @ @ @ @ responsible for the deaths of hundreds of American and coalition service members and the wounding of thousands more.
” Based on past precedent , any Iranian response is likely to be asymmetric and carried out by proxy groups , and may also include physical or cyberattacks against critical infrastructure .
To a degree not seen in years , U.S. personnel in Iraq may now also be at risk .
In the past , directly targeting U.S. troops in the country was seen as taboo given the longstanding Iranian goal of preventing escalation that @ @ @ @ @ @ @ with the conflict suddenly turning into a hot war with the top-ranking Iranian as a target , that may well change .
The consequences could be painful for both sides .
The killing of Suleimani is in many ways a watershed moment in a policy of confrontation with Iran that Trump has pursued since taking office .
The relationship between the United States and Iran reached a relative high point following the signing of an Obama-era agreement over Iran ’ s nuclear program in 2015 .
From the beginning , that agreement had @ @ @ @ @ @ @ any compromise with Iran and pushed for the most aggressive stance possible .
Trump ’ s decision to revoke U.S. participation in the nuclear deal after taking office helped set off the chain of events that has brought the two countries closer to full-blown war than at any time since the 1979 Iranian Revolution .
Suleimani ’ s killing has also likely eliminated the possibility of a future U.S. president reentering the nuclear agreement should Trump lose the 2020 election .
“ The strike is bad news , as it takes off the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Iran and the United States , ” Esfandiary said .
“ Suleimani was a popular figure inside Iran and even many Iranians who are against the government are likely to be outraged about the targeting of a high-ranking official of their country .
No Iranian leader will be able to spare the political capital to engage with the U.S. , at least for the foreseeable future.
” The killing of Suleimani is the latest and most significant event in an intensifying U.S.-Iran conflict inside Iraq .
In response to shelling by Iranian militias @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Iraqis , the U.S. carried out an airstrike earlier this week that killed dozens of Shia militia members tied to Iran .
Days later , members of that same militia stormed the U.S. Embassy , smashing windows and forcing diplomatic staff to barricade themselves inside for safety .
That brief siege ended without any casualties .
To be clear , Suleimani was a military commander who had spent almost his entire life at war .
He was no stranger to violence and in all likelihood envisioned such a death for himself .
In @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the brutal and sectarian manner in which he had waged the war against the Islamic State in Iraq .
In April , the Trump administration took the unusual step of designating the Revolutionary Guards a foreign terrorist organization .
But the decision to kill such a powerful individual without any apparent idea of what comes next is chillingly reckless .
What happens in the coming weeks and months is still a matter of speculation .
But it is safe to say that if , as likely , bloodshed in the region immediately escalates @ @ @ @ @ @ @ price .
“ From the Iranian side , there will obviously be anger and a desire to retaliate , ” said Thomas Warrick , a nonresident senior fellow at the Atlantic Council .
“ It is safe to assume that the Iranians or any militias in Iraq that they support had plans they were prepared to execute if an attack like this occurred .
It ’ s clear that this is not going to be over tonight .
”

Until his death last night in an airstrike near Baghdad International Airport, Maj. Gen. Qassim Suleimani was the United States’s most formidable adversary in the Middle East. As commander of the Quds Force, the external operations branch of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, Suleimani fought a decadelong proxy war against the U.S. and its allies across Iraq and the region. It was a conflict in which the Iranian side has largely come out on top, as their own leaked internal documents have shown.
The reported airstrike last night has taken this bitter conflict to an altogether new level. The killing of Suleimani, along with several other top Iraqi Shia militia leaders, is the single most significant lethal operation since the joint U.S.-Israeli assassination of Lebanese Hezbollah operative Imad Mughniyeh in Damascus in 2008.
It is also perhaps the most reckless foreign policy action by President Donald Trump since he took office. Unlike Mughniyeh or other nonstate militants that the United States has killed over the years, Suleimani was a ranking official of a foreign government. He was a popular figure among Iranian nationalists whose reputation as a battlefield commander in Iraq and Syria had been publicly promoted by a regime looking to boost its flagging domestic popularity. His killing seems to mark the beginning of direct hostilities between the United States and Iran, with top officials apparently not off-limits for violence. Late last night, the Department of Defense issued a statement claiming responsibility for Suleimani’s killing, saying that he and the Quds Force were “responsible for the deaths of hundreds of American and coalition service members and the wounding of thousands more.”
Although that claim is doubtless true, the statement did not indicate what the United States or its allies expect will occur in the wake of this extreme step. Despite their differences with Iran, neither the Obama nor the George W. Bush administrations thought it wise to kill Iran’s best-known military commander.
“This seems like a very shortsighted decision. I can’t imagine that much thought went into it besides the perception that killing Suleimani would look like a big victory,” said Dina Esfandiary, an expert on Iran at the Century Foundation. “The Iranians will definitely respond, but not in a way that triggers an all-out war, which they know they would lose.”
Based on past precedent, any Iranian response is likely to be asymmetric and carried out by proxy groups, and may also include physical or cyberattacks against critical infrastructure. To a degree not seen in years, U.S. personnel in Iraq may now also be at risk. In the past, directly targeting U.S. troops in the country was seen as taboo given the longstanding Iranian goal of preventing escalation that could lead to all-out war. But with the conflict suddenly turning into a hot war with the top-ranking Iranian as a target, that may well change. The consequences could be painful for both sides.
The killing of Suleimani is in many ways a watershed moment in a policy of confrontation with Iran that Trump has pursued since taking office. The relationship between the United States and Iran reached a relative high point following the signing of an Obama-era agreement over Iran’s nuclear program in 2015. From the beginning, that agreement had been opposed by hawks who recoiled against any compromise with Iran and pushed for the most aggressive stance possible. Trump’s decision to revoke U.S. participation in the nuclear deal after taking office helped set off the chain of events that has brought the two countries closer to full-blown war than at any time since the 1979 Iranian Revolution. Suleimani’s killing has also likely eliminated the possibility of a future U.S. president reentering the nuclear agreement should Trump lose the 2020 election.
“The strike is bad news, as it takes off the table any prospect of future dialogue between Iran and the United States,” Esfandiary said. “Suleimani was a popular figure inside Iran and even many Iranians who are against the government are likely to be outraged about the targeting of a high-ranking official of their country. No Iranian leader will be able to spare the political capital to engage with the U.S., at least for the foreseeable future.”
The killing of Suleimani is the latest and most significant event in an intensifying U.S.-Iran conflict inside Iraq. In response to shelling by Iranian militias that killed an American contractor and several Iraqis, the U.S. carried out an airstrike earlier this week that killed dozens of Shia militia members tied to Iran. Days later, members of that same militia stormed the U.S. Embassy, smashing windows and forcing diplomatic staff to barricade themselves inside for safety. That brief siege ended without any casualties.
To be clear, Suleimani was a military commander who had spent almost his entire life at war. He was no stranger to violence and in all likelihood envisioned such a death for himself. In secret cables, Iranian intelligence officers lamented the brutal and sectarian manner in which he had waged the war against the Islamic State in Iraq. In April, the Trump administration took the unusual step of designating the Revolutionary Guards a foreign terrorist organization. But the decision to kill such a powerful individual without any apparent idea of what comes next is chillingly reckless. What happens in the coming weeks and months is still a matter of speculation. But it is safe to say that if, as likely, bloodshed in the region immediately escalates, Iraqi civilians will pay the highest price.
“From the Iranian side, there will obviously be anger and a desire to retaliate,” said Thomas Warrick, a nonresident senior fellow at the Atlantic Council. “It is safe to assume that the Iranians or any militias in Iraq that they support had plans they were prepared to execute if an attack like this occurred. It’s clear that this is not going to be over tonight.”


theintercept--2020-01-03--Four Years Ago, Trump Had No Clue Who Iran’s Suleimani Was. Now He May Have Kicked Off WWIII.

then-Republican presidential candidate Donald J. Trump then-Republican presidential candidate Donald J. Trump appeared on the syndicated radio show of conservative media star , Hugh Hewitt , to talk foreign policy .
“ Are you familiar with General Suleimani ?
” Hewitt asked the real estate mogul from Queens .
“ Yes , ” said Trump , before hesitating .
“ Go ahead , give me a little … tell me.
” When Hewitt told Trump that Suleimani “ runs the Quds Forces , ” Trump responded : “ I think the Kurds , by the way , have been horribly @ @ @ @ @ @ @ not the Kurds , the Quds Forces , ” Hewitt interjected .
“ The Iranian Revolutionary Guards , Quds Forces .
The bad guys.
” Got that ?
Candidate Trump confused the Quds Force , an elite Iranian military unit then led by high-profile Maj. Gen. Qassim Suleimani , with the Kurds , a high-profile ethnic group in the Middle East .
Now fast forward four years and four months to yesterday , when President Trump ordered the assassination of Suleimani from his golf course .
In an official statement that misstated the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ in charge of , the Pentagon said the strike was “ aimed at deterring future Iranian retaliation plans.
” This is not a column , however , about the consequences of the U.S. government assassinating the second-most powerful man in Iran ( spoiler : they ’ re going to be dire ! )
.
Nor is it a column about the legality of such a deadly strike on a foreign official on foreign soil ( spoiler : it ’ s hard to justify ! )
.
Rather , this is a column that @ @ @ @ @ @ @ that Donald Trump is president of the United States ; my ongoing bewilderment with a world in which an unhinged , know-nothing former reality TV star and property developer , with zero background in foreign affairs or national security , may have just kicked off World War III .
( From his golf course , no less . )
It ’ s also a column that allows me to revisit what I have long considered to be the most unforgivable take of the 2016 presidential race : “ Donald The Dove , Hillary @ @ @ @ @ @ @ headline to the New York Times column from Maureen Dowd in April 2016 , in which she falsely claimed that Trump had opposed the Iraq War “ like Obama , ” and then credulously suggested that , in contrast to Clinton , “ he would rather do the art of the deal than shock and awe.
” Here ’ s the twist , though : There were two recent amendments to the 2020 National Defense Authorization Act , or NDAA , in the House of Representatives that might have prevented this week ’ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Khanna ’ s amendment to block funding for any military action against Iran that lacks congressional approval , and Rep. Barbara Lee ’ s amendment to repeal the 2001 Authorization for Use of Military Force .
Both of these amendments , however , were stripped from the final NDAA that passed the House and Senate — with the approval of elected Democrats in both chambers .
And God help the rest of us .

Photo: Nicholas Kamm/AFP/Getty Images
In September 2015,
then-Republican presidential candidate Donald J. Trump appeared on the syndicated radio show of conservative media star, Hugh Hewitt, to talk foreign policy.
“Are you familiar with General Suleimani?” Hewitt asked the real estate mogul from Queens.
“Yes,” said Trump, before hesitating. “Go ahead, give me a little … tell me.”
When Hewitt told Trump that Suleimani “runs the Quds Forces,” Trump responded: “I think the Kurds, by the way, have been horribly mistreated by us.”
“No, not the Kurds, the Quds Forces,” Hewitt interjected. “The Iranian Revolutionary Guards, Quds Forces. The bad guys.”
“I thought you said Kurds,” a sheepish Trump replied.
Got that? Candidate Trump confused the Quds Force, an elite Iranian military unit then led by high-profile Maj. Gen. Qassim Suleimani, with the Kurds, a high-profile ethnic group in the Middle East.
Now fast forward four years and four months to yesterday, when President Trump ordered the assassination of Suleimani from his golf course. In an official statement that misstated the name of the organization that Suleimani was in charge of, the Pentagon said the strike was “aimed at deterring future Iranian retaliation plans.”
This is not a column, however, about the consequences of the U.S. government assassinating the second-most powerful man in Iran (spoiler: they’re going to be dire!). Nor is it a column about the legality of such a deadly strike on a foreign official on foreign soil (spoiler: it’s hard to justify!).
Rather, this is a column that allows me to express my ongoing astonishment that Donald Trump is president of the United States; my ongoing bewilderment with a world in which an unhinged, know-nothing former reality TV star and property developer, with zero background in foreign affairs or national security, may have just kicked off World War III. (From his golf course, no less.)
It’s also a column that allows me to revisit what I have long considered to be the most unforgivable take of the 2016 presidential race: “Donald The Dove, Hillary the Hawk.” That was the ridiculous headline to the New York Times column from Maureen Dowd in April 2016, in which she falsely claimed that Trump had opposed the Iraq War “like Obama,” and then credulously suggested that, in contrast to Clinton, “he would rather do the art of the deal than shock and awe.”
Plenty of people across the political spectrum foolishly bought into the ludicrous premise that Trump would be some sort of dove.
A reminder: Trump pulled out of the landmark Iran nuclear deal less than 18 months after assuming office. He replaced his predecessor’s nuclear diplomacy with a “maximum pressure” campaign on Tehran, which had pushed the United States and the Islamic Republic to the brink of war even before this latest dangerous escalation.
Dowd was wholly, utterly, and embarrassingly wrong — as some of us tried to explain at the time. But it wasn’t just her. Plenty of other people across the political spectrum foolishly bought into the ludicrous premise that Trump would be some sort of dove, a noninterventionist, an old-fashioned isolationist.
And plenty of my colleagues in the media continue to push this deluded view. Remember: Trump has twice bombed the Assad regime in Syria; reduced Mosul and Raqqa to rubble; vetoed a congressional attempt to end U.S. involvement in the Saudi bombardment of Yemen; and overseen a fivefold increase in drone strikes throughout the region and beyond. Yet on New Year’s Eve, the New York Times still insisted on bizarrely referring to “the president’s reluctance to use force in the Middle East.”
That line, of course, hasn’t aged so well. Less than 72 hours later, the commander of Iran’s Quds Force and the deputy head of the Iran-backed militias in Iraq, are dead. Killed via drone.
The United States has now effectively declared war on Iran. This is no longer a “cold” war or a “shadow” war. It’s a war-war. And here’s what so terrifying about it: The current commander-in-chief of the U.S. military as it readies for open conflict with Tehran is the guy who last week accused Canada’s prime minister of cutting him out of a Canadian TV version of “Home Alone 2”; who regularly retweets QAnon, Pizzagate, and white nationalist accounts on Twitter; who believes that Ukraine is in possession of a nonexistent Democratic National Committee server; who thinks climate change is a Chinese hoax; who wants to use nuclear weapons to stop hurricanes; and who is willing to take a Sharpie to an official government map in order to prove he was right about the weather (when he was, in fact, 100 percent wrong).
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Here’s the twist, though: There were two recent amendments to the 2020 National Defense Authorization Act, or NDAA, in the House of Representatives that might have prevented this week’s escalation with Iran: Rep. Ro Khanna’s amendment to block funding for any military action against Iran that lacks congressional approval, and Rep. Barbara Lee’s amendment to repeal the 2001 Authorization for Use of Military Force. Both of these amendments, however, were stripped from the final NDAA that passed the House and Senate — with the approval of elected Democrats in both chambers.
Shame on those Democrats.
And God help the rest of us.