1. A Brief Recap of Yesterday's Events (Just the Facts)
President Trump, after warning 3 days ago that Iran would pay "a very BIG PRICE," authorized a drone strike at Baghdad International Airport that killed Iran's top general and second most powerful official, Qasem Soleimani.
President Trump, after warning 3 days ago that Iran would pay "a very BIG PRICE," authorized a drone strike at Baghdad International Airport that killed Iran's top general and second most powerful official, Qasem Soleimani.
2. Pentagon: "At the direction of the President, the U.S. military has taken decisive defensive action to protect U.S. personnel abroad by killing Qasem Soleimani, the head of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps-Quds Force, a U.S.-designated Foreign Terrorist Organization."
3. The strike also killed Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis, the deputy commander of the Popular Mobilization Forces, a group of Iranian-backed militias in Iraq.
4. "In killing General Soleimani," the N.Y. Times reports, "Trump took an action that Presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama had rejected, fearing it would lead to war between the United States and Iran."
Time will tell, but I for one applaud President Trump this decision.
Time will tell, but I for one applaud President Trump this decision.
5. Democratic leaders are not pleased with President Trump's decision to take out these guys.
6. Speaker Pelosi said in a statement that the Iraq strike "was taken without the consultation of the Congress," and "risks provoking further dangerous escalation of violence."
7. Joe Biden said President Trump "tossed a stick of dynamite into a tinderbox" with the targeted killing of Iran's top general, and said it could leave the U.S. "on the brink of a major conflict across the Middle East."
8. Bernie Sanders said: "Trump's dangerous escalation brings us closer to another disastrous war in the Middle East that could cost countless lives and trillions more dollars."
9. Elizabeth Warren called Qasem Soleimani "a murderer, responsible for the deaths of thousands, including hundreds of Americans." But she said Trump's "reckless move escalates the situation with Iran and increases the likelihood of more deaths and new Middle East conflict."
10. No significant presidential decision is without controversy. Yesterday's events were quite clarifying in terms of the type of person Americans can choose in 2020 to be their Commander-in-Chief. We know what Trump decided, and we know what others would have done.
The END.
The END.
*I for one applaud President Trump for this decision.
