THE PRESIDENT CONTINUES TO FOCUS ON HIS MAIN WEAKNESS

 

… The US President ordered the assignation of Iran Major Gen. Qasem Soleimani

To lie, is simply the president’s default mode of living.

As a Washington Post writer recently wrote: “President Trump is a straight shooter. He consistently shoots himself in the foot.”

This continues to be the truth as President Trump has now crossed the line to having issued 15,000 lies or mis-statements.

Even with his knee-jerk decision on the golf course to kill Major Gen. Qasem Soleimani, Iran’s Quds Force Commander that was killed in a US drone strike on Jan. 3^rd.  This was a decision that Trump had originally made 7 months ago with the condition that, “If the general kills an American, he should die.”  When Trump learned that one US contractor was killed in Iraq by this middle east terrorist’s proxies, Trump issued the attack to kill the general. 

Now, the Iran Major General has had a target on his back going back to President Obama when the general was found responsible for the deaths of an estimated 600 US troops in Iraq, which was also the rational for Obama to send US troops to fight the Islamic State.  But most recently, when the Iran’s general proxies rocket attacked killed the US contractor at the US Embassy in Bagdad.  That was obviously all the president needed to give the order.

But then he just had to tell a lie by telling his followers at one of his campaign rallies that Iran had targeted four US embassies.  Four embassies that the Defense Secretary Mark Esper on a Sunday TV show said he "didn't see" any evidence of 4 embassies.  He said that, “that’s what the president believed”, not that’s what there was evidence of.

Just like when the US Special Operations Forces tracked down the terrorist Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, this wasn’t enough for Trump.  In Trump’s recounting of that raid, our former reality TV host claimed that the head of the Islamic State died “whimpering and crying and screaming all the way.”  This outrageous detail of course could not be corroborated by the Defense Department, mainly because it was reported that al-Badhdadi had used a suicide vest so that he wouldn’t be taken alive..

To try and satisfy the legal standard for a preemptive military strike, the Trump administration obviously decided to claim that it was acting to disrupt an “imminent” attack on US personnel.  But unfortunately, they were unable to release any intelligence to support its case because it was all without evidence.  This was even after a number of the US lawmakers expressed skepticism based on the poor briefing they received of the general’s killing.  The briefings was so bad, even the GOP Sen. Mike Lee (R-UT) called it:  “the worst briefing I’ve seen, at least on a military issue, in my nine years in the senate”.

Trump then of course, felt he was compelled to double down on his statement.

So, he went from claiming that Soleimani was about to bomb the US Embassy in Baghdad to claiming the general was about to bomb four US embassies.  At the rate Trump is going, by next week,  he may claim that Soleimani was going to bomb 40 US embassies.

The Post’s reporters say that “a senior administration official and a senior defense official” that they spoke with “were only aware of vague intelligence about a plot against the embassy in Baghdad and that the information did not suggest a fully formed plot.  Neither official said there were threats against multiple embassies.”

It is all obviously another Trump lie that his administration is scrambling to justify.  Since he has now passed his 15,000^th lie, why not make it a big one!  That impression is further supported by the lame and shifting explanations offered by his #1 point person on Iran, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo.  Our slippery Secretary of State told Laura Ingraham in an interview that “there were a series of imminent attacks,” but “we don’t know precisely when, and we don’t know precisely where.” Ingraham replied: Umm, if you don’t know where or when the attacks were going to occur, how do you know they were “imminent”?  Pompeo had no response.  When later pressed by reporters to define “imminent,” Pompeo retreated into vague generalities, saying, “This was gonna happen and American lives were at risk.”

In other words, there was no evidence, but we in the Trump administration are mind readers and we knew what they were planning.

The then disingenuous secretary of defense, Mark Esper, even admitted on a Sunday program that he “didn’t see” the intelligence about Iran’s plan to bomb four embassies, but he said we should accept Trump’s belief that “it probably could have been” so.

So, we should take it on faith that a president that has told 15,000 fact-checked lies, that falsely believed that a hurricane was going to hit Alabama, or that the Democratic National Committee may have been hacked not by the Russians, but by a 400 pound couch potato, this is someone that we should just, “take his word on faith?”

Apparently, another nail in the coffin of the “imminent” attack story was delivered last Friday when The Post reported that US forces had tried to kill a senior Quds Force commander in Yemen on the very same day that Soleimani was killed in Iraq. This is beginning to look like a premeditated campaign to decapitate Iran’s terrorist Quds Force, instead of it being a response to a looming threat.

You know, to keep America safe and because the Quds Force has killed so many innocent people over the past decades, there is absolutely nothing wrong with taking that approach.

What the administration is doing is legally, and perhaps even strategically justifiable.  All Trump would have to do is to come clean with the American people. In this case, unlike in his dealings with Ukraine or his lying about Stormy Daniels, it is doubtful that he would have anything disreputable to hide.

But Donald J. Trump has lied for all of his of his life and now he continues to sabotage his own causes by lying.  This is simply because this is his default mode of living.

He thus takes his attention from what could be presented as a rare foreign policy win, to instead focusing the attention on one of his biggest weaknesses which is: his overall congenital dishonesty. 

This president has done more to make the United States as being totally untrustworthy and the laughing stock of the world.  The US was once the leader of the free world and the envy of many nations.

It will take decades to achieve that world-wide position, if ever again.

This president deserves to be removed, or at the least to lose his office in November.

Copyright G. Ater 2020