Early this morning Iran shot down a U.S. drone that may or may not have been in U.S. airspace. The “president” posted one of his signature stupid tweets about it —
Iran made a very big mistake!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) June 20, 2019
— and then later walked it back.
Asked later in the day about the downing of the drone, Trump seemed to suggest that Iran may have shot it out of the sky by accident. “I would imagine it was a general or somebody that made a mistake in shooting that drone down,” he said in the Oval Office alongside Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau. “I have a feeling that it was a mistake by somebody who shouldn’t have been doing what they did.”
Oh, that kind of mistake.
This afternoon congressional leaders are meeting with the administration in the White House about Iran. I am not optimistic.
Yesterday the New York Times reported that Mike Pompeo evoked the name of al Qaeda when talking about Iran.
The Trump administration is telling Congress about what it says are alarming ties between Iran and Al Qaeda, prompting skeptical reactions and concern on Capitol Hill.
Briefings by Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, backed up by other State Department and Pentagon officials, have led Democrats and some Republicans to ask whether the administration is building a case that the White House could use to invoke the war authorization passed by Congress in 2001 to battle terror groups as legal cover for military action against Iran.
As tensions between the United States and Iran have surged, Mr. Pompeo has sought to convince Congress that there is a pattern of ties between Iran and the terrorist group going back to after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, officials said.
A few days earlier, Pompeo was blabbering about Iran and the Taliban, prompting Juan Cole (whom I tend to trust on these matters) to respond,
Pompeo’s statement is so embarrassing as to be cringe-worthy. It is either a lie in the service of war propaganda or a display of such bottomless ignorance on the part of America’s chief diplomat as to be grounds for impeachment (or perhaps just consignment to an asylum).
Juan Cole goes on to explain the various ethnic/religious groups in the region and who is on speaking terms with whom, but the Taliban remain fanatical Sunnis while Iran is run by conservative Shia, so …
How’s about we suit up Bolton and Pompeo and send ’em out to fight two Iranian counterparts, preferably with wooden swords? I can’t bear the thought of that moron Trump being in charge of any real military action.
