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10 January 2020

'The worst briefing I've had': Senate Iran briefing gets heated & Sen. Lee And Other Lawmakers Criticize White House Briefing On Iran & Col. Lawrence Wilkerson Calls Out Trump’s Lies on Iran 8&9JAN20

U.S. Senators' Mike Lee (R-UT) and Rand Paul (R-KY) depart via the Senate Subway following a classified national security briefing of the U.S. Senate on developments with Iran after attacks by Iran on U.S. forces in Iraq, at the U.S. Capitol in Washington, U.S., January 8, 2020. REUTERS/Tom Brenner (Tom Brenner/Reuters)
U.S. Senators' Mike Lee (R-UT) and Rand Paul (R-KY) depart via the Senate Subway following a classified national security briefing of the U.S. Senate on developments with Iran after attacks by Iran on U.S. forces in Iraq, at the U.S. Capitol in Washington, U.S., January 8, 2020. REUTERS/Tom Brenner (Tom Brenner/Reuters)
THE PROPAGANDA campaign by the drumpf / trump-pemce administration and their fascist neocon supporters continues, fortunately there are some in the mainstream media and in congress willing to challenge the lack of justification, the lies and deception about (NOT MY) presidents attempt to drag us into another illegal and immoral war, this time with Iran. This from CNN, NPR and Democracy Now!

'The worst briefing I've had': Senate Iran briefing gets heated

Updated 7:11 PM ET, Wed January 8, 2020

(CNN)Senate Democrats -- and two key GOP senators -- slammed a classified briefing Wednesday on the strike that killed Iranian commander Qasem Soleimani, charging that administration officials failed to provide evidence to show the attack was imminent and dismissed the role Congress should play in deciding to take military action.
The sharpest of the criticism came from two of President Donald Trump's Senate allies: Republican Sens. Mike Lee of Utah and Rand Paul of Kentucky. Lee said after the briefing that it was the "worst briefing I've had on a military issue" during his nine years in the Senate.
In an interview with CNN's Wolf Blitzer on "The Situation Room" on Wednesday, Paul said the briefing was "an insult to the Constitution."
"In the briefing and in public, this administration has argued that the vote to topple Saddam Hussein in 2002 applies to military action in Iraq. That is absurd," Paul told Blitzer. "Nobody in their right mind -- with a straight face, with an ounce of honesty -- can argue when Congress voted to go after Saddam Hussein in 2002 that (they) authorized military force against an Iranian general 18 years later."
    Paul later added, "There was no specific information given to us of a specific attack. Generality -- stuff that you read in the newspaper. I didn't learn anything in the hearing that I hadn't seen in a newspaper already."
    ‪Lee called the way the briefing played out "un-American" and "completely unacceptable," given that the administration suggested that Congress shouldn't have a role in approving Iran military action. He said the administration would not commit to a new Authorization for Use of Military Force or a cite a reason for coming to Congress before taking military action.
    "At one point one of the briefers said something like, 'Don't worry, we'll consult you,'" Lee said. "Consultation isn't a constitutional declaration of war. Drive-by notification or after the fact lame briefings like the one we just received are inadequate."
    Paul and Lee also announced they would support the War Powers resolution sponsored by Democratic Sen. Tim Kaine of Virginia, which would limit the President's ability to use military force in Iran.
    Four senators in the room said the briefing became tense and heated amid repeated questions from senators about the intelligence regarding how imminent a future attack would be and the legal justification for striking Iran.
    The administration representatives ended up leaving before all questions were asked -- departing after the allotted time of 90 minutes. Several senators, including Lee, said the briefing itself lasted 75 minutes.
    Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, Defense Secretary Mark Esper, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Mark Milley, CIA Director Gina Haspel and acting Director of National Intelligence Joseph Maguire briefed senators and House members on Wednesday.
    Esper pushed back at lawmakers who slammed the briefing Wednesday, saying, "Most members of Congress do not have access to the intelligence that I think was the most compelling."
    On Tuesday, Esper had said that the "exquisite intelligence" on the threat posed by Soleimani that drove the US military to target him in a drone strike would be shared only with the Gang of Eight -- a group of eight lawmakers made up of congressional leaders from both parties as well as the Intelligence Committee chairs -- saying "most Members (of Congress) will not have access to that."
    Senate Democrats pressed for specifics of the targets and timeline, and while senators said the timeline was described as within "days," the information provided in Wednesday's briefing did not explicitly back that up, according to Democrats.
    At one point, Sen. Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota, a 2020 Democratic presidential candidate, pressed on the imminence of the attack. Several senators said they came away with the sense her specific question remained unanswered.
    Administration officials were pressed about whether the attacks would be carried out especially since Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei apparently had not signed off on what Soleimani was plotting, sources said.
    "I walk away unsatisfied on the key questions that I went into this briefing with," said Sen. Robert Menendez of New Jersey, the top Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. "It makes me concerned that we cannot have clarity on those key questions -- imminency, target, all of those things."
    House Democrats expressed similar concerns that the administration officials failed to justify claims of an imminent attack, and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi announced that the House would vote Thursday on its Iran War Powers resolution.
    The administration officials said the strike was justified under Article II and the 2002 Authorization for Use of Military Force, or AUMF. That resolution authorized the Iraq War, and the officials said the strike was justified under it because it took place in Iraq. But the officials said the AUMF would not cover any military action inside Iran.
    Republicans expressed frustration over the Democratic posture during the briefing, with Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina saying they were "out of their minds" for how they approached the strikes.
    "They don't want specifics. I was really disappointed in their behavior in there because it was clear to me that this guy was up to no good in the moment," Graham said.
      Following the briefing, a group of Democrats, including Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, came to the cameras to voice their concerns. Shortly after, Pompeo walked out behind them, and appeared to be waiting to speak at the cameras as well. After a few minutes of listening to the Democrats, however, Pompeo departed the Senate basement without making a comment.
      This story has been updated with additional developments Wednesday.

      Sen. Lee And Other Lawmakers Criticize White House Briefing On Iran

      Heard on Morning Edition
      NPR's Rachel Martin talks to GOP Sen. Mike Lee of Utah about his support for a resolution to limit the president's war powers over what he called an insulting briefing. NPR's Mara Liasson weighs in.
      RACHEL MARTIN, HOST:
      The Trump administration has informed the United Nations that when it killed Iran's General Qassem Soleimani in a drone strike, it was acting in self-defense. But many members of Congress haven't seen evidence of that. And according to some lawmakers who were briefed by the White House yesterday, they've been instructed not to ask tough questions about the president's ability to use military force against Iran in the future.
      Our next guest was in that closed-door briefing and afterwards called it, quote, "insulting and demeaning". He is Republican Senator Mike Lee of Utah, and he joins us now. Senator, thank you so much for talking with us.
      MIKE LEE: Thank you. It's good to be with you.
      MARTIN: You came out and came to the microphones and said it was the worst briefing you have seen on a military issue in your nine years in the U.S. Senate. What happened?
      LEE: Yes. You know, my anger was not about the Soleimani killing. It was, instead, about the possibility of future military action against Iran. And it was on that topic that they refused to make any commitment about when, whether and under what circumstances it would be necessary for the president, or the executive branch of government, to come to Congress seeking authorization for the use of military force.
      MARTIN: Because Congress was not given a...
      LEE: I find that unacceptable.
      MARTIN: Congress was not given a heads-up that the strike was going to happen against Soleimani.
      LEE: That's right. That's right. And now, I want to be clear - with respect to the strike against Soleimani, that was arguably lawful. I still have questions that remain unanswered on that point. I'm going to set that side - aside a moment. And I'm going to assume, for purposes of this discussion, that that may well have been lawful.
      What I'm most concerned about is about where that goes from here. What comes next? Is there another strike coming against Iran? If so, at what point do they need to come to us seeking an authorization for the use of military force? The fact that they were unable or unwilling to identify any point at which that would be necessary yesterday was deeply distressing to me.
      MARTIN: What kind of hypotheticals were you putting to them in hopes of understanding when the administration sees a need for congressional authority?
      LEE: As I recall, one of my colleagues asked a hypothetical involving the supreme leader of Iran. If at that point, the United States government decided that it wanted to undertake a strike against him personally, recognizing that he could be a threat to the United States, would that require authorization for the use of military force? The fact that there was nothing but a refusal to answer that question was perhaps the most deeply upsetting thing to me in that meeting. I think it was unprofessional, inappropriate and reflective of a certain cavalier attitude toward the Constitution to refuse to make a commitment on that front.
      MARTIN: So the reporting has it that you all, in that briefing, were outrightly discouraged from asking tough questions - that the tone in the room got a little tense when people tried to push. Is that correct?
      LEE: Well, when people asked tough questions, it's not so much that we were discouraged from asking them in that context as much as it was we weren't getting direct answers. And at one point, at least one of the briefers discouraged us even from having a debate on the Senate floor, including, among other things, in the context of a War Powers Act resolution talking about future military action - that that might somehow embolden the Iranian regime in future attacks against the United States and wouldn't be helpful. I think that is the very kind of advice that is counterproductive and decidedly not helpful. And I found that upsetting.
      MARTIN: So they were discouraging debate over a potential War Powers Act that would limit the president's ability to deploy military force against Iran. This is something, we should mention, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi is bringing a vote on this very kind of resolution today. It is my understanding that you were against limiting the president's power in that respect before you went into this briefing, and you came out and changed your mind.
      LEE: I wouldn't put it quite like that. I was undecided as to whether I would be supporting the resolution introduced by Senator Kaine - an amended, modified version of that pursuant to amendments that he agreed with me to make yesterday. But...
      MARTIN: So where do you stand on...
      LEE: ...Any doubt I had about joining that - oh, I'm going to join it. I'll be supporting it. I'll not only be voting for it, I'll become a co-sponsor of it as soon as those changes are made...
      MARTIN: I do want to play...
      LEE: ...To his amendment.
      MARTIN: Sorry to interrupt. I do want to play a clip of Florida Senator Marco Rubio. He and other Republicans had a dramatically different take on the outcome of the briefing.
      (SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
      MARCO RUBIO: It was very well done. I think they've done an excellent job of outlining the rationale behind both the decision to go after Soleimani and the response to the Iranian attack yesterday.
      MARTIN: Now, you have said earlier that you believe in the legal justification of the strike. But how could Marco Rubio come out of that briefing with such a different opinion than you?
      LEE: I think he must have been in a different briefing than I attended. I literally find it difficult to imagine how my friend Marco, who is smart, who listens carefully, who cares about these things - how he could emerge from that meeting and say that it was good. It was terrible. I think it was an unmitigated disaster.
      MARTIN: What kind of precedent do you think this sets?
      LEE: Not a good one. It's a precedent that is, unfortunately, not itself unprecedented. We have had many decades now - going back 50, 60, 70 years - in which we've been drifting away from this idea embedded within the Constitution that the power to declare war belongs to the Congress. It's enumerated in Article I, Section 8. There's a reason for that. We wanted to make sure that the power to put American blood and treasure on the line is given only to that branch of government most accountable to the people at the most regular intervals. Ours is not a system in which we can be taken into war by the executive, and it never should be.
      MARTIN: Republican Senator Mike Lee of Utah. We appreciate your time. Thank you, sir.
      LEE: Thank you.
      MARTIN: NPR's Mara Liasson was listening into that conversation. She joins me now. Mara, what's your response?
      MARA LIASSON, BYLINE: Hi, there.
      MARTIN: What did you think about that?
      LIASSON: Well, this - I have - there have been a lot of clashes between the president and his own party on foreign policy, even though Republicans are usually in lockstep with him on almost everything else. But I have never seen it reach this level of ferocity, even if it isn't that widespread other than Senator Lee. Senator Paul has also expressed his disappointment in the briefing. I don't know how many more Republicans would come forward.
      But this is a pretty big split. And as Senator Lee said, the clash between the branches about war powers have been going on for a long time. Congress has been ceding its constitutional authority to declare war, bit by bit, to the executive. But this is a president who has said that Article II of the Constitution lets him do whatever he wants. And Mike Lee said he has a cavalier attitude towards Congress; others have said it's contemptuous.
      MARTIN: Is this going to be a problem for the president, who up until now - as you have noted - has enjoyed a kind of unanimity among Republicans on the Hill?
      LIASSON: I don't think that the War Powers Resolution is going to affect him in the short term. First of all, he seems to be willing to accept the off-ramp that Iran was offering, doesn't want to escalate. And also, this is a resolution. It's not...
      MARTIN: Right. It's not binding.
      LIASSON: It doesn't have the force of law, yeah.
      MARTIN: NPR's Mara Liasson with context for us. Thank you.
      LIASSON: Thank you.
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      Col. Lawrence Wilkerson Calls Out Trump’s Lies on Iran

      ColumnJANUARY 09, 2020
      By Amy Goodman & Denis Moynihan
      President Donald Trump brought the United States to the brink of war with Iran by ordering the assassination of Gen. Qassem Soleimani, the second most powerful figure in Iran. After Soleimani and four others were killed in a U.S. drone strike at Baghdad International Airport Friday, Trump, offering no evidence, alleged that Soleimani was orchestrating imminent attacks on American personnel. We should be skeptical when Trump, or any leader, invokes secret “intelligence” to justify their violent actions. Perhaps no one knows this better than Col. Lawrence Wilkerson, who served as Secretary of State Colin Powell’s chief of staff from 2002 to 2005. He witnessed, and participated in, the effort by President George W. Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney and others to promote lies to justify the disastrous, illegal invasion of Iraq in 2003.
      “That effort led to a war of choice with Iraq — one that resulted in catastrophic losses for the region and the United States-led coalition, and that destabilized the entire Middle East,” Wilkerson wrote in a New York Times editorial in 2018 titled, “I Helped Sell the False Choice of War Once. It’s Happening Again.” Wilkerson continued, “the Trump administration is using much the same playbook to create a false impression that war is the only way to address the threats posed by Iran. This war with Iran … would be 10 to 15 times worse than the Iraq war in terms of casualties and costs.”
      Back in 2003, Col. Wilkerson helped Powell prepare his infamous Feb. 5, 2003, speech before the United Nations Security Council. “My colleagues, every statement I make today is backed up by sources, solid sources,” Powell said. “These are not assertions. What we’re giving you are facts and conclusions based on solid intelligence.” His presentation included numerous slides, audio clips and a sample vial, purportedly containing anthrax, which Powell gingerly held aloft for the cameras. The speech lasted over two hours and, it turns out, was riddled with lies and fabrications. Powell would later describe his performance as a permanent “blot” on his record. But it did the job. Six weeks later, “shock and awe” began: The Bush/Cheney administration indiscriminately bombed Iraq.
      “All across the region, the chaos that we’re looking at was produced by the United States invasion in 2003,” Wilkerson observed on the “Democracy Now!” news hour this week. “I watched as the intelligence was cooked, as principals in the George W. Bush government were sold by that intelligence or helped to warp that intelligence, as was the case with Dick Cheney, and I watched the inevitable march to war.”
      Among the similarities that Wilkerson sees between the lies that led to war in 2003 and today are Trump surrogates appearing on TV or, now, Twitter, lying to the public. Vice President Mike Pence tweeted after the assassination that Soleimani “assisted in the clandestine travel to Afghanistan of 10 of the 12 terrorists who carried out the September 11 terrorist attacks in the United States.”
      “Pence’s words are laughable,” Wilkerson said on “Democracy Now!” “Soleimani and his entourage were actually helping us in Afghanistan in 2001, early 2002, to fight the Taliban. We got indispensable help from Iran in that regard.”
      Secretary of State Mike Pompeo has been one of the most vocal and omnipresent defenders of Trump’s assassination of Soleimani. “We are going to lie, cheat and steal, as Pompeo is doing right now, as Trump, [Defense Secretary] Esper, Lindsey Graham [and] Tom Cotton [are] doing right now, and a host of other members of my political party, the Republicans, are doing right now … to continue this war complex.” Wilkerson said. “That’s the truth of it. And that’s the agony of it.”
      Col. Wilkerson is not the only Republican critical of Trump’s actions. Utah Republican Sen. Mike Lee spoke to the press Wednesday, reacting to what he said was “probably the worst briefing I’ve seen, at least on a military issue.” He called the briefing “absolutely insane,” and described how the briefers discouraged a debate on Iran in Congress: “I don’t care whether they’re with the CIA, with the Department of Defense or otherwise to come in and tell us that we can’t debate and discuss the appropriateness of military intervention against Iran. It’s un-American, it’s unconstitutional and it’s wrong.”
      Col. Lawrence Wilkerson, who has witnessed the war-makers behind closed doors, firsthand, is not optimistic about the prospects for peace: “Ever since 9/11, the beast of the national security state, the beast of endless wars, the beast of the alligator that came out of the swamp, for example, and bit Donald Trump just a few days ago, is alive and well,” he concluded on “Democracy Now!” “America exists today to make war.”
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