Iranian General Sulemain and others reported killed in Baghdad airstrike

[Edge-]

https://amp.cnn.com/cnn/2020/01/30/p...ani/index.html

Shocking news: CBP lied.

After denying reports that they were directives to interrogate people of Iranian origin following the Suleimani strike, there is a one-page memo literally directing them to interrogate anyone of Iranian, Lebanese, or Palestinian origin born between 1961-2001, including American citizens.

[Orbitus]

https://amp.cnn.com/cnn/2020/01/30/p...ani/index.html

Shocking news: CBP lied.

After denying reports that they were directives to interrogate people of Iranian origin following the Suleimani strike, there is a one-page memo literally directing them to interrogate anyone of Iranian, Lebanese, or Palestinian origin born between 1961-2001, including American citizens.

So, there is going to be a bunch of violations of civil rights lawsuits brought up because of this.

[Edge-]

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/artic...ouse-memo-says

The version of the memo that Engel released does not include a classified annex that was also transmitted by the White House. The public document makes only a passing allusion to the possible “threat of imminent attack,” prompting some of the president’s critics to again question whether Trump and other senior administration officials were being truthful when they claimed that Soleimani had an impending plot.

“This official report directly contradicts the president’s false assertion that he attacked Iran to prevent an imminent attack against United States personnel and embassies,” Engel said in a statement. “The administration’s explanation in this report makes no mention of any imminent threat and shows that the justification the president offered to the American people was false, plain and simple.”

Engel went on to say that using the Iraq war authorization to justify the attack was “absurd” because the strike was against an Iranian official.

So, because the Trump administration is a joke, they're just now finishing memos to create a legal basis for the strike against Sulemani. This is usually something done before any attack is undertaken, and for context Obama had lawyers create 5 different memo's with legal justification for killing Bin Laden.

Interestingly, it apparently doesn't really say much about an "imminent attack", which was the administration line for weeks following the strike.

Almost like there was no intelligence supporting that assertion, and this administration is filled with lawless liars including our Secretary of State.

[Breccia]

Almost like there was no intelligence supporting that assertion, and this administration is filled with lawless liars including our Secretary of State.

Wait, there's more.

Pompeo is set to testify before the Foreign Affairs committee on Feb. 28.

Trump told Fox News on Jan. 10 that he believed Soleimani was planning attacks on the U.S. embassy in Baghdad and three other U.S. embassies in the region. Two days later, U.S. Defense Secretary Mark Esper told CBS News that he “didn’t see” intelligence suggesting the specific threat Trump described.

“What the president said was, he believed it probably could have been,” Esper said in a separate interview with CNN. “He didn’t cite intelligence.”

Man, it's going to be interesting to see what excuse Pompeo uses to get out of this one. Maybe he'll say he has a headache?

[Sorshen]

https://slate.com/news-and-politics/...ssination.html

It's official. Strike was done cause Trump felt like. Can't wait for Skroe to get back and perform some mental gymnastics rationalizing how it was a good thing anyway.

[I Push Buttons]

https://slate.com/news-and-politics/...ssination.html

It's official. Strike was done cause Trump felt like. Can't wait for Skroe to get back and perform some mental gymnastics rationalizing how it was a good thing anyway.

Skroe never claimed there was an imminent threat and defended just killing him because we could, saying we should have killed him years ago even, right from the start...

The guy was a terrorist and an avowed enemy of the US responsible for the deaths of Americans. That's justification enough for killing him or anyone.

[Sorshen]

That's justification enough for killing him or anyone.

It's literally not. How the fuck do you think it's justification to go around international airports doing this shit?

[Skroe]

https://slate.com/news-and-politics/...ssination.html

It's official. Strike was done cause Trump felt like. Can't wait for Skroe to get back and perform some mental gymnastics rationalizing how it was a good thing anyway.

Before I begin, I just want to say I expect an apology this evening, in the form of a haiku. Please be creative.

You ready?

I wrote this on 1-05-2020, just after he was killed.

Trump going with the “imminent attack” line, which was almost certainly a lie, is a terrible, terrible mistake that is setting his policy up for failure since its birth here.

A decapitation strike on Soleimani because of the embassy’s sacking is reason enough. That is the right message to send.

If he (Trump) elects to pursue a fairy tale whereby the US used Cerebro and Professor X to peer into the minds Solemani and disrupt an attack that was imminent and only he knew about, Trump is opening himself up to international and domestic inquiries. Inquiries that will show he is at worst lying, at best exaggerating the urgency.

If that’s what happens, he deserves the firestorm that will come. Because the lesson or “attack our property and threaten our people and you die for it” is good enough.

Maybe it's because I've been around the block a few times by now, I knew exactly how this was going to go, literally, from the first moment this happened. Of course there was never an imminent attack. It's bullshit and the Trump administration is idiotic for going down that route. They opened up this avenue to probing for some fucking reason. Killing Sulemaini for the things he already did was good enough. The American people were on board with that. No need for some fantasy scenario.

We were right to off him, and right to deter Iran. The policy is and remains the right one. The argument that the administration made about the threat though? Bullshit from the first hour, and they deserve every bit of crap they get about it. I'm not even a communications expert in government and I could forsee how the "imminent threat" line was going to go - exactly like every other imminent threat.

The US government should never, ever try that line. They can never deliver the goods on it. Pretty much everything they've done over the last 30 years can be justified as retaliation for prior action, rather than preemption. But hey, for some reason a bunch of idiots across five administrations keep wanting to jump in the same policy grave.

- - - Updated - - -

It's literally not. How the fuck do you think it's justification to go around international airports doing this shit?

Because Iraq is a war zone whose security is guaranteed by the United States, and who under-bilateral agreement, the Iraqi government has given the United States a free hand to conduct counter-terrorist operations as we see fit.

You talk as if we droned Charles de Gaulle Airport. Baghdad is not Paris. Iraq is not France. Iraq is a barely functioning country that exists hemmed in on all sides by various military conflicts. Completely not surprisingly, we used a drone somewhere in that shit storm.

And anyway at this point if you have concerns, I'm sure there is some Embassy or consulate for you to go protest outside of somewhere. Honestly I really don't care. Sulemaini should have been sent off to hell in the 2000s. We invite problems by being overly prudent with people like him and international mischief makers.

A key lesson from this for the New Cold War: avoid future problems by keeping the board clear of the other sides' mischief makers, like we did during the last Cold War.

[Trifle]

Of course there was never an imminent attack. It's bullshit and the Trump administration is idiotic for going down that route. They opened up this avenue to probing for some fucking reason. Killing Sulemaini for the things he already did was good enough. The American people were on board with that. No need for some fantasy scenario.

I would like to point out that if there wasn't an imminent attack, then the assassination was illegal under both American and international law. That is presumably the entire reason they went with the imminent attack angle.

[Gaidax]

I would like to point out that if there wasn't an imminent attack, then the assassination was illegal under both American and international law. That is presumably the entire reason they went with the imminent attack angle.

Who cares if it's legal or not - as if US (or most other countries) are truly bound by that shit when push comes to shove. It's all grey area anyway, as reply above you can confirm.

The bottom line is: Suleimani is right where he should be - 6 feet under, good riddance. And yes, this shit should have been done decades ago, not by the time his bloody work is already mostly done and can be handed off to some less talented peon.

[Thekri]

I would like to point out that if there wasn't an imminent attack, then the assassination was illegal under both American and international law. That is presumably the entire reason they went with the imminent attack angle.

He addressed that too. The question of what is "Legal" as opposed to "Illegal" in counter-terror operations is deliberately and totally vague. Laws that govern such strikes are so maddeningly unspecific as to be meaningless. This is by design, as lawmakers do not want to be held accountable for specific actions, but neither do they want to take the blame if another horrific attack occurs that could have been prevented.

Legislative bodies all over the world, not just the US, have passed near total authority and responsibility for counter-terrorism to the executive. This is a loathsome state of affairs, but it is where we are right now. Due to the vagueness of the laws, pretty much anything a President does can be interpreted as either legal or illegal, usually centering on vague terms like "Threat" or "Risk" that are obviously subjective based on who is looking at them. Killing Soleimani was probably not illegal. Not provably anyway. Even if it was, Trump has proved he can break laws with impunity anyway, and it isn't like he is going to get impeached for this.

So at the end of the day, this was a poorly planned, ill considered strike that was launched on the whims of a frustrated old man that never read his security briefings closely enough to know who any of these people are. It happened to hit someone who was legitimately an enemy of the United States. Nobody should be sorry Soleimani is gone, but it is certainly reasonable to be concerned about a President that orders people killed based on his mood at the time.

[Easo]

I am not surprised that this was basically bullshit. Yeah, I won't miss the dear general, no one normal will (no, I do not want to hear bullshit excuses), but this is Trump doing stupid shit based on nothing, most likely for populism points.
I mean, what could possibly go wrong? /s

[Skroe]

I would like to point out that if there wasn't an imminent attack, then the assassination was illegal under both American and international law. That is presumably the entire reason they went with the imminent attack angle.

As @Thekri said, I discussed that... back in early January.

The US government, rather conveniently, labeled Quuds Force (and also I think, the greater IRGC) as a Terrorist Organization. This is an official, legal designation within US law, and not some hand-wavy thing. It means the US military and US intelligence agencies are authorized to do certain things they couldn't otherwise do.

Is Quuds / IRGC a terrorist group? No. It's pretty straight forward they're Iranian government intelligence services. There is no direct US-analog. It's part CIA, part Special Operations Command, part national military policy, part State Department, part private military contractor. Other countries do things other ways.

But labeling it a terrorist group means that killing him was legally no different than killing any old member of Al Qaeda or ISIS via drone strike. It's the same thing. Under the post-9/11 counter-terrorism AUMF, a massive blank check, we can do it, anywhere, and it's legal, so long as it's against terrorists.

International law is mostly quite to these issues. And as Thekri said, that's a serious problem. Something we've seen a lot of since 9/11 is authoritarian regimes utilizing "fighting terrorism" as a way to supress internal dissent. They used to rarely call internal challenges "terrorists". Since 9/11 and the language the US adopted, they began to use it constantly. Of course, it was a bad faith usage, but it wasn't the point. "Fighting terrorism" has proven to be a legitimizing veneer, or at least they thing. And truly, to a degree they have a legitimate right to think that. After all, we did right a blank check for ourselves to fight terrorists, nearly 20 years ago.

This is why I've wanted that AUMF gone for years, and why I called the War on ISIS, launched illegitimately under that AUMF, an illegal war. This is why I believe all AUMFs should have annual or bi-annual expiration. Because I fundamentally agree that this manner international behavior is hugely counterproductive to international security and the spread of democracy in the long term. if the US formally ended War on Terror tomorrow (in terms of mindset and language and policy), it would be at least a generation before the damage that certain things we have done in that war, will have been reversed. And by that point it'll have been nearly 50 years since the beginning and the end of both an era and an error.

But as it stands, killing him was legal, because of it.

More broadly, as Thekri point's out, this reflects a flaw in democracy. What happens when something is popular, or semi-popular, and done illegally or illegitimately or semi-legally? Good behavior and fear of precedent has historically restrained politicians from acting in such a manner. With Trump, we've seen that's been an imaginary line. What Democrat would ever seriously impeach the President for killing an enemy military commander whose actions lead to the death of perhaps 1000 US troops in the 2000s and 2010s? That's a politically crazy hill to die on, even if it is morally and legally right. It'll never get the votes, and there isn't a polity in the world whose people are intellectually and morally honest enough to separate "its good that he's dead" and "it's a crime in how he was killed".

This is why I have come to believe - against the writings of some topical experts mind you, who I think are wedded to an era that's passed - that the enduring lesson of the Trump era is that procedure must be written out, in the law, explicitly, and implied powers sharply curtailed. The Trump era should be followed by an era of sharp constraints on what elected officials and governments can do.

This is why I kind of chuckle when I read these ridiculous articles by writers on the left, and the right, that Democrats and Trump must be careful not to "damage the office of the President" in order to protect it for future President. I can't help but think "you know what? It needs severe damaging. It needs it's knees and arms broken and its balls cut off".

- - - Updated - - -

Who cares if it's legal or not - as if US (or most other countries) are truly bound by that shit when push comes to shove. It's all grey area anyway, as reply above you can confirm.

The bottom line is: Suleimani is right where he should be - 6 feet under, good riddance. And yes, this shit should have been done decades ago, not by the time his bloody work is already mostly done and can be handed off to some less talented peon.

The legality of it absolutely does matter. It's the most essential element there is. It is what makes us better than say, Vladimir Putin's regime or Xi Jinping, where one man is the law.

The rules we live in are our civilization. We abandon those rules, we abandon our civilization for barbarity.

That being said, we also have a responsibility for those rules. And Americans have been grossly irresponsible with regards to many rules we've written for ourselves since the 1930s. Yes, there is the aforementioned post-9/11 AUMF blank check. There is also the President's insane ability to declare national emergencies. And Congress's instituting "negation votes" (that typically fail) rather than "affirmation votes" (that would legitimize, and without it, it wouldn't happen).

It's hilarious we have Democratic Presidential candidates talking about M4A, when the greatest threat to Americans right now isn't healthcare, but the fact that the redistribution and abuse of powers since the Great Depression has culminated in a Presidential office that is ripe for tyranny and a legislature that is all to happy to never take a hard vote, or bear any responsibility for anything.

Killing Sulemaini was manifestly legal. And while I'm glad he's in hell and chuckle at the arguments against deterrence or that somehow being a good thing in the world, the manner in which it was achieved is a reflection of our rule of law in decline.

[stamfurth]

So at the end of the day, this was a poorly planned, ill considered strike that was launched on the whims of a frustrated old man that never read his security briefings closely enough to know who any of these people are. It happened to hit someone who was legitimately an enemy of the United States. Nobody should be sorry Soleimani is gone, but it is certainly reasonable to be concerned about a President that orders people killed based on his mood at the time.

Which has been going on for 20 years now....but its different now because Trump is doing it.

[stunkwunk]

As @Thekri said, I discussed that... back in early January.

Why is this forum Skroe's fucking blog?

[caervek]

You talk as if we droned Charles de Gaulle Airport.

There isn't technically that much difference really, you guys used an illegal drone strike to assassinate somebody at an international airport where there could have been countless civilian casualties. The country the airport happened to be in isn't really relevant to the action being wrong.

[Trifle]

The US government, rather conveniently, labeled Quuds Force (and also I think, the greater IRGC) as a Terrorist Organization. This is an official, legal designation within US law, and not some hand-wavy thing. It means the US military and US intelligence agencies are authorized to do certain things they couldn't otherwise do.

Guess the Saudis should have just labelled Khashoggi a terrorist, then everything would have been fine! Who knew.

[Thekri]

Guess the Saudis should have just labelled Khashoggi a terrorist, then everything would have been fine! Who knew.

Legally, internally, yes. And that is exactly the problem that @Skroe is talking about. This is not a good thing, this is the result of Congress giving George Bush a blank check, and forgetting to write an expiration date on it. Nobody in this thread is defending the absurd legal framework that exists around counter-terrorism operations.

As far as international relations go, it depends on who else considers the person a terrorist. Obvious a lot of nations didn't consider Sulemani a terrorist, and they objected strenuously to killing him. The Saudis did briefly try the "terrorist" angle with Khashoggi, but they quickly dropped it when the US reacted very angrily to that line of rationalizing.

[CostinR]

There isn't technically that much difference really, you guys used an illegal drone strike to assassinate somebody at an international airport where there could have been countless civilian casualties. The country the airport happened to be in isn't really relevant to the action being wrong.

Do you think they weren't aware of the civilian risk and worked around that?

He was killed in such a precise way as to ensure there wouldn't be civilians killed in the strike. It wasn't chance.

As for "illegal drone strike". Illegal under what terms? Some vague notion of the so called international "law" that doesn't even exist? Iraqi law? American law?

Nobody in this thread is defending the absurd legal framework that exists around counter-terrorism operations.

It will continue because no political leader wants another Paris to happen on their hands, but similarly none of them want political debates to happen every time a country takes out a suspected or well known terrorist leader, because they raise rather difficult question that elected officials just don't want to deal with it.

So the worst happens. Governments basically get a blank check from their legislative bodies to deal with this kind of stuff, and the executive branches try and figure out the best way for themselves.

[Thekri]

There isn't technically that much difference really, you guys used an illegal drone strike to assassinate somebody at an international airport where there could have been countless civilian casualties. The country the airport happened to be in isn't really relevant to the action being wrong.

I get that this doesn't make a lot of difference, but there wasn't going to be "Countless civilian casualties". They struck one car, and it wasn't in the middle of the public area of the airport. The military did its job professionally here, the real argument is about the civilian order to do so (From Trump specifically).

As far as "illegal" that is what we have been talking about. There really are no laws that directly cover this sort of thing, however there are authorizations that exist that give carte blanche to strike members of declared Terrorist groups. Quds Force is designated as a terrorist group by the US government (You can disagree if it should be, but it was designated such), and as such the strike is almost certainly legal under US law. Is it legal under international law? Well that is probably something a team of law professors could argue about for a few months, but it isn't blatantly illegal at least.

The US authorizations to strike terrorists are so ridiculously broad that if Trump could get someone to declare the New England Patriots a terrorist group he could probably legally drone strike Tom Brady. The thing that reigns in this power is basically people getting outraged when it gets misused. Right now, the GOP shields Trump from pretty much any consequences from anything, so there isn't much anyone can do about it (Short of declaring war on the US at least). All we can really do is vote that unstable asshole out of office in November, and hope he doesn't kill someone who doesn't have it coming in the meantime.