[Yamsi12]

Good riddance.

[Crazypants]

It was time to put Iran in its place.

[SRTtoZ]

Irans response was blowing up a Passenger Jet full of their own people.

[RealityUnfolding]

Originally Posted by Vedderman ↗

Reading/comprehension is not exactly your long suit, is it, sunshine?

Fuck off, I've repeated myself three times in this thread, so you're either being willfully obtuse or you're actually too stupid to comprehend anything I've said.

Go watch some Fox News, which should be infinitely easier for you to understand, given that you are clearly their target demographic. They'll explain it all to you exactly the way you like. Clearly and concisely and monosyllabically.

No, the problem is people like you think by restating a bad point, if people don't agree - right or wrong - you think they have a problem with reading comprehension, rather than you just putting together a shitty argument. Restating a bad argument doesn't make it good.

The fact you think the US was alone in wanting him dead pretty much shows how lazy you were in research on QS or anything related to him. OBAMA named him a priority target. Particularly after the UN found major abuses be he and his family against political dissidents and gays.

The UN sanctioned Iran for his participation 12 years ago. He was supposed to go quietly into the night and stop moving about internationally once he was linked with terrorists as part of the deal. He didn't.

Further to this point, Trump didn't REMOTELY act outside his authority and there is a large difference in taking out a terrorist on a world's list and declaring war. A President does NOT need Congressional authority to take out a target identified as KOS. Acting like there is a difference in Bin Laden and QS is your first mistake, but let's even drop BL in this - how about Qaddafi? (Though, I find the argument we just droned him enough and brought him out to the wolves to let OTHER people capture and torture him hilarious - semantics from hell.) All three were actions in a sovereign country without the full knowledge or participation of that country's government. QS was supposed to NOT be a high level military official. Iran disregarded that directive from the UN. And it was the UN itself that stated that targets, regardless of which country they were in, if loss of life could be minimized but there was a clear action of threat imminently, they would not have issue with taking such a target out. Period. Doesn't matter what their rank is or what country they belong to.

Acts that can be done during war are different than declarations of war.

Not to mention the willful blindness thinking that the Iranian people came out because they just ADORE him. That's like insisting anyone who ever seeks gory curiosity or voyeurs on a historical moment just MUST absolutely be adoring of the subject. Further to this, if you'd bothered to step outside of the main media (you know, the ones you trust apparently, because who can't resist a FoxNews thrust when they have to shut their mind), there are plenty of Iranians who've been posting and sharing (against their own laws and at risk of punishment by death) information such as many were forced at gunpoint by Iran's military to come out onto the streets to make it appear this guy was "loved". Many didn't have a choice.

I mean, you've literally spewed the lines of Iranian state-run network like it's the only facet to this, ignoring the fact that MANY MANY MANY Iranians are very happy this has happened.... if you bothered to go read their stories, tweets, posts and blogs. But you won't.

Meanwhile, Iran shoots down a plane full of "infidels" - engineers who left Iran to go to white people land, including women and tried to deny it. Repeatedly. Then blocked access to the black boxes, damaged them, and hauled away a bunch of wreckage before allowing any third parties in. It wasn't until footage (again, illegally disseminated from inside Iran) of the missile hitting the plane went worldwide that they couldn't deny it.

Though they are still claiming a whoopsie, the fact is, that plane was FULL of various engineers who "abandoned" Iran. There is no coincidence that several Canadian universities had an unnatural gaggle of similar occupation/field of study were on a single plane, after the world issued a no-fly zone and this was the ONLY plane that was not told of it, instead told to take off.

I'm sure it was just a mistake...

Then, to add to this kerfluffle, Trump has done the exact opposite of escalation. You see, QS had taken out a Saudi oil field and a British tanker. He was messing with world supply. Some of our intelligence on QS came from... *drumroll* MI5. (Just as our intelligence on Bin Laden did, coincidentally.)

Lastly, if you want proof the Iranians are happy about this - go look at any of the current happenings at various universities and cities, particularly Tehran right now. They are chanting things like (loosely translated) "glad he's dead, down with the regime" and "thank you USA".

[RealityUnfolding]

BTW, here's a ground round up of overall coverage - though still omits a lot of the videos of happiness over QS and tries to focus on just the parts of the protest covering the plane being shot down, since I'm sure you'll have something snappy to say like "only Trump says they are protesting to dick wave" or something like that.

And here's Reuters, even trying to spin an interview with an anti-QS Iranian-American who hoped now with his death, Iran could be freed...

The hilarity of throwing an op/ed line in between the gentleman's quotes is transparent to those not sitting around with dumbass-colored glasses. (Reuters op/ed in bold/underline, showing a completely different view of their interviewee with a lovely vague "many".) But it also shows how the Iranians were already fighting against this regime - long before Trump exploded QS.

CULVER CITY, Calif. (Reuters) - The death of a top Iranian general in an American missile strike was long overdue, the leaders of a U.S.-based pro-democracy group said on Tuesday, and might “open a window” for dissidents to challenge a weakened government in Tehran.

General Qassem Soleimani, the commander of Iran’s elite foreign paramilitary and espionage service, known as the Quds Force, was killed on Friday when missiles fired by a U.S. drone struck his vehicle as he left Baghdad airport.

The surprise attack on Soleimani, who built up Tehran’s network of proxy armies across the Middle East and was a pivotal figure in orchestrating its campaign to drive U.S. forces out of Iraq, has plunged the region into a new crisis and raised fears of a wider war.

“This was long overdue,” Nasser Sharif, president of the California Society for Democracy in Iran, told Reuters in an interview. Sharif said Soleimani had used repressive tactics against the Iranian people, spread fear via the Quds Force, and supported the government of President Bashar al-Assad in Syria.

“Soleimani was pushing an agenda of expanding terror across the Middle East. He is responsible for the death of thousands of people. When our community here heard this news it was thrilled,” Sharif said.

Southern California is home to the largest concentration of Iranians outside that country and hundreds of pro-democracy Iranian-Americans are set to meet on Saturday in a long-planned convention at which the death of Soleimani is likely to be a major topic of discussion, Sharif said.

Soleimani was a national hero to many Iranians, whether supporters of the clerical leadership or not, but viewed as a dangerous villain by Western governments opposed to Iran’s arc of influence running across the Levant and into the Gulf region.

On Tuesday at least 56 people were killed in a stampede in Tehran as tens of thousands packed streets to mourn the military commander. Iran pledged revenge for his death and, hours after the funeral, it launched a missile attack on U.S.-led forces in Iraq.

Sharif said dissidents inside and outside Iran see the country’s leadership as vulnerable, weakened financially, and exposed to the world as repressive, and believe the death of Soleimani comes at an opportune time for those seeking a democratic uprising.

“This might open a window for Iranian protesters to come out into the streets again,” Sharif said. The general would be hard for Tehran to replace, he said.

“Our organization doesn’t want war,” Sharif added. “It wants change by the Iranian people.”

In November, protests initially sparked by an abrupt hike in gasoline spread across Iran as demonstrators called for more political freedom. Reuters has reported that some 1,500 people were killed in the resulting crackdown ordered by Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the bloodiest since the Islamic Revolution in 1979.

[Vedderman]

Originally Posted by RealityUnfolding ↗

No, the problem is people like you think by restating a bad point, if people don't agree - right or wrong - you think they have a problem with reading comprehension, rather than you just putting together a shitty argument. Restating a bad argument doesn't make it good.

Except that the point to which I was referring was that surrounding the public assassination of a high-ranking military official with a bunch of twitter boasting and chest-thumping made us look barbaric, impulsive, and was designed to escalate, not de-escalate.

The point to which I referred was that it is better for all of us that QS is dead, but the method by which our embarrassing Dipshit In Chief handled the entire affair was weak, inconsistent, outmoded, and embarrassing.

That's all, you see. And while I appreciate and agree with many of the cogent points you raised, you completely and utterly missed the point of the post you quoted.

I never advocated for QS or any other 'terrorist' to be given a 'free pass' as habsphannn suggested. Just that 45 could have handled his removal and the circumstances surrounding it more elegantly and in a manner that did not strongly push escalation. By suggesting that I was advocating for QS to get a free pass, habsphannn did, in fact, demonstrate a lack of reading comprehension skill. He read something I stated (QS needed to die, but this was poorly handled) and claimed that I stated something else entirely (that all terrorists should be given a free pass if they have a governmental claim to legitimacy).

Also, when exactly did I state that the Iranians loved QS and were actually mourning him? I can't see anywhere that I said that or even alluded to it.

Further, if you actually have any idea what I do on this site, you know that I get daily news from more than a dozen different countries and several dozen sources. I have friends, family, and dozens of news sources all over the world and I can assure you that in the wake of this, the media reaction to Trump was far from favorable in every Latin/South American country I source from, as well as every Asian country I source from, and most of the European countries I have contacts in. But I never once, to my recollection, stated that the Iranians as a whole weren't glad to see QS go. You must have conflated one of my posts with someone else's.

Sorry you also missed the gist of what I was saying. Thanks for your thoughts none the less.

[Vedderman]

Originally Posted by RealityUnfolding ↗

And it was the UN itself that stated that targets, regardless of which country they were in, if loss of life could be minimized but there was a clear action of threat imminently, they would not have issue with taking such a target out. Period. Doesn't matter what their rank is or what country they belong to.

Except neither 45 nor Pompeo can provide any indication as to what this 'imminent threat' was. Unless they prove to someone, Congress, the American people, or 'The Gang of 8' in the LEAST that the threat was imminent enough to warrant murdering the man at an airport in Iraq, this shit doesn't hold water.

Whenever asked about it, they tell vague, conflicting stories. Just saying, "We don’t know precisely when and we don’t know precisely where, but it was real.” (Pompeo's quote on the subject) literally does not qualify as 'imminent' by its very definition. An item that is 'imminent' is something that is 'about to happen.' They cannot possibly sell that it was 'about to happen' if they did not know WHAT it was, WHERE it was, or WHEN it was happening.

Sorry, 45 exceeded his brief here. And he did so clumsily and inelegantly.

Even if the world is a better place without QS.

Rule of Law still matters in this country. However much 45 and Fox News continue to try to disabuse us of that notion.

[mmansfield]

God I love Trump.

[explorer42]

One less evil fucker to worry about. USA forever!

[jonnboi]

Yeah....that is NOT the same ring.....