So here's how deeply the US govt has pissed off many allies including its former ally #Iraq'i PM Abdul-Mahdi. He was due to meet #Soleimani in Baghdad to hear S deliver Iran's response to a #Saudi letter re regional de-escalation. thenational.ae/world/mena/us-… > 
2/ So Abdul-Mahdi sent a senior #Iraq'i security official, Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis, to the airport to meet #Soleimani. But @realDonaldTrump decided to kill both men by drone, near the airport. Later in this thread I'll go into the "thinking" behind Trump's outrageous decision >
@realDonaldTrump 3/ But now just look at the local, #Iraq-#Saudi optics of Trump's kill order. I imagine more than a few ppl in MBS entourage, maybe MBS himself, are really angry? The US-Iran escalation they were seeking to de-escalate carries massive threats for #SaudiArabia. Meantime in #Iraq >
@realDonaldTrump 4/ OBVIOUSLY, PM Abdul-Mahdi was majorly angry not just at the unraveling (!) of the de-escalation effort, which is terrible news for #Iraq, but also at the sheer arrogance of Trump's kill order. So when he went to #Iraq's parliament today >
@realDonaldTrump 5/ He not only strongly supported the resolution to expel the US troops from #Iraq but he also publicly shared the info about his intended meeting w #Soleimani, the existence (& torpedoing) of the #Saudi back-channel, and so on. >
@realDonaldTrump 6/ Now, as in evident, Trumps' killing of #Soleimani is having very broad and anti-American repurcussions in many countries in & beyond the Middle East. And by the way, >
@realDonaldTrump 7/ The Iraqi foreign minister has been tasked to go the UN Security Council tomorrow & lodge an extremely strong complaint there about the completely illegal US assassination op on #Iraq'i soil against a high Iraqi official & "a foreign guest." Definitely a key move. >
@realDonaldTrump 8/ So these still-continuing repurcussions of the Trump kill order were all, in broad outline, *completely predictable* (& indeed widely predicted.) Let's assume US Centcom commanders, who've been operating in the region for 37 years, knew that such fallout was predictable. >
@realDonaldTrump 9/ So today, in an intriguing article in the @nytimes we learn that sometime in the days before the #Soleimani killing, "American military officials" had put that option onto the menu of options they presented to @realDonaldTrump: nytimes.com/2020/01/04/us/… >
@realDonaldTrump @nytimes 10/ But they didn't think he wouldn't choose it & were rptdly stunned when he did. The NYT writers wrote: "In the wars waged since [9/11/2001], Pentagon officials have often offered improbable options to presidents to make other possibilities appear more palatable." >
@realDonaldTrump @nytimes 11/ Tho actually, that move that US govt bureaucrats make of producing 3 "options" for decisions, & framing them in such a way as to "naturally" lead the policymaker to choose the middle one, goes back much further than 9/11. >
@realDonaldTrump @nytimes 12/ So who the heck in the US military put "Kill #Soleimani" onto the options list at all? Like, why not put something like "launch thermonuclear war" there, as well? And how were the (presumably) three options proposed framed, described, & presented? >
@realDonaldTrump @nytimes 13/ In particular, were the costs and risks of each of the "options" presented properly described there? (My spouse points out that it is possible they were, but that @realDonaldTrump is well known not to read the fine print, only the "bullet points".) >
@realDonaldTrump @nytimes 14/ So the question remains, who in the US govt was responsible for presenting that options list to #Trump? Reporting in that same @nytimes article & elsewhere strongly indicates that #Pence was orchestrating things a lot. nytimes.com/2020/01/04/us/…
@realDonaldTrump @nytimes 15/ The @nytimes piece notes that, "By late Thursday, the president had gone for the extreme option. Top Pentagon officials were stunned." Think about that. Weren't they the ones, according to them article's lede, who had put the kill option onto the list in the first place? >
@realDonaldTrump @nytimes 16 / This is just one of many signs of extremely serious institutional rot at the pinnacle of decisionmaking of the world's largest and most lethally armed nuclear power. Others include: >
@realDonaldTrump @nytimes 17 / The fact that leakers from US intel agencies have been spreading the word to the @nytimes & others that they saw no signs there was anything like the "imminent threat" against US soldiers or other targets that was cited by Trump as the reason to kill #Soleimani. >
@realDonaldTrump @nytimes 18/ (And actually on that point, even Gen. Mark Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs described the "imminence" of any such threat very vaguely indeed, as being "days, weeks" ahead. That wd give the US govt enough time to work diplo channels to inactivate the threat, such as... >
@realDonaldTrump @nytimes 19/ Hey, they could have sent a #Saudi emissary to try to de-escalate tensions!!) But no, the USG has been so deeply captured by the warfighters in its midst that some of them no longer even see the need to produce *evidence* for the charges they make against opponents. >
@realDonaldTrump @nytimes 20/ Unlike, for example, poor old Colin Powell back in Feb 2003 who had to labor long & hard to pull together the best case he could, built on extremely flimsy & as it turned out false evidence, for why invading #Iraq was justified & necessary. >
@realDonaldTrump @nytimes 21/ Back in '03, most of the US public & legislators were still so traumatized by 9/11 that they rolled over & gave the warfighters (mil-industrial complex) what they wanted without interrogating the "evidence" they presented or asking the hard questions. But now, >
@realDonaldTrump @nytimes 22/ Thank G-d we're 19 years after 9/11. Plus i the intervening years we have *seen* the terrible devastation that American "wars of choice" have wrought-- both on the millions of people living in the countries targeted and on American lives, American society & economy. >
@realDonaldTrump @nytimes 23/ So now, we do have some of the right questions being asked by politicians here in Washington-- still, mainly Democrats. We are now still on the brink of the maelstrom of truly global proportions that Trump's kill order has brought the world to. >
@realDonaldTrump @nytimes 24/ I will describe the possible dimensions of that maelstrom in a separate thread. But for now, all antiwar forces in the USA & elsewhere need to redouble our efforts to bring Trump & his two dangerous, truly "apocalyptic" sidekicks, Pence & @SecPompeo, back from the brink. END.
@realDonaldTrump @nytimes @SecPompeo Footnote/ In Tweet 10 above I wrote "wouldn't" when I meant to write "would"-- as in, the mil guys never dreamed that Trump *would* choose the kill option... Sorry!
