Lying Us Into War

By Trump's own standards, it's an impeachable offense

Persepolis, Shiraz, Iran. Photo by Hasan Almasi on Unsplash

We’ve Heard This Song Before

There’s uproar across the political spectrum following Trump’s reckless, ill-thought-out killing of Iranian general Qasem Soleimani.

While the news that Trump would launch some kind of “Wag The Dog” military action to distract from his impeachment trial may not have been a YUGE surprise, the revelation that assassinating Soleimani was presented to him as the “stupid option” only increases people’s concern that Trump is truly a mentally incompetent idiot who should not be allowed anywhere near the nuclear launch codes.

Kurt Andersen @KBAndersen

@nytimes: “Officials presented the president with options. The Pentagon tacked on the choice of targeting Suleimani mainly to make other options seem reasonable. They didn’t think he would take it. When Mr. Trump chose the option, military officials, flabbergasted, were alarmed.”

But it’s not just the stupidity. It’s also the lying.

Daniel Larison in The American Conservative explains why there’s no reason to trust anything Trump says in relation to his utterly reckess decision:

The Trump administration has made a habit of lying about all things related to Iran, so it should come as no surprise that their official justification for killing Soleimani is similarly dishonest. Pompeo has said that the assassination was ordered to prevent an “imminent” attack, but that appears to be based on nothing.

And Will Bunch, in his new column in the Philadelphia Inquirer, sums up why America is in no mood to be lied to again by warmongering Republicans:

The shocking events of the last 100 hours or so -- beginning with the provocative and impulsive President Trump-ordered assassination of an Iranian general -- have been like a PTSD flashback on acid of blatantly lying government officials and chest-thumping warmongering TV pundits, on top of the dull ache of realization that for six decades now you’ve watched the United States and its leaders learn absolutely nothing.

The fact that Mike Pence was part of the GOP’s WMD Propaganda Team the last time around doesn’t help:

The Daily Edge @TheDailyEdge

Mike Pence helped lie America into war with Iraq: “Weapons of mass destruction have been found in Iraq.” There were no WMDs.

But the biggest lying hypocrite of all is, of course, Trump himself. His pledge to avoid unnecessary wars was a cornerstone of his 2016 election campaign. But in 2008, he went even further than that. In a recently unearthed interview with CNN, Trump explicitly told Wolf Blitzer that Nancy Pelosi SHOULD HAVE IMPEACHED George W. Bush for lying us into an unnecessary war:

The Daily Edge @TheDailyEdge

In 2008, Trump told @wolfblitzer that Bush should have been #impeached for lying America into an unnecessary war. “He got us into this horrible war with lies, by lying... by saying all sorts of things that turned out not to be true.”

Now that Trump is the one doing the lying—and threatening to commit war crimes in the process—the need for a fair Senate trial and Trump’s swift removal from office is more urgent than ever.

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