1. One thing that struck me Thursday night after the assassination of Suleimani was people racing to agree that he had the blood of many Americans on his hands but a) without specifics and b) raising the question of why then was he virtually unknown to the average U.S. citizen
2. So the evidence - especially from Dexter Filkins' seminal 2013 NYer profile - is that Suleimani worked with Shi'ite militias in Iraq that killed Americans, especially with IEDs, during the mid-late 2000s. Why didn't US media publicize this? Where were the 'Wanted' posters?
3. I think the answer is simple. America didn't want to publicize the real outcome of our horribly misguided 2003 Iraq invasion, that it didn't make the world safer but opened the door for Iran to wield influence over Iran. In other words...
4. ...acknowledging the role and influence of Suleimani during the Iraq insurgency would have been an acknowledgement that the U.S. had no idea what it was doing in Iraq or the Persian Gulf. Iran's influence was covered up
5. This is worth noting because we STILL have no idea what we're doing in the Persian Gulf. The same people who horribly botched Iraq in 2003 are now making things exponentially worse in 2020, and still misleading the American people. Stop this nonsense. #NoWarWithIran -30-
Ugh -- in tweet 3 should be Iran wielding influence over *Iraq*
