“NBC is reporting that President Donald Trump was mulling the hit on Iranian Maj. Gen. Qassem Soleimani seven months ago, with war hawks such as John Bolton urging him to go for it. This further erodes the administration’s claim that the assassination was done to stop an “imminent” attack on U.S. lives.
“According to five current and senior administration officials,” NBC reports, Trump gave the order in June 2019, “with the condition that Trump would have final signoff on any specific operation to kill Soleimani.” Trump said that signoff would come if any Americans were killed, their sources said, which “explains why assassinating Soleimani was on the menu of options that the military presented to Trump two weeks ago for responding to an attack by Iranian proxies in Iraq.” That proxy attack killed a U.S. contractor.”
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“Secretary of State Mike Pompeo quickly and repeatedly attributed it not to retribution but to an alleged imminent threat to dozens (sometimes “hundreds”) of American lives.Secretary of State Mike Pompeo quickly and repeatedly attributed it not to retribution but to an alleged imminent threat to dozens (sometimes “hundreds”) of American lives.”
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“Yesterday, Defense Secretary Mark Esper told Face the Nation that he knew of no “specific evidence” to support the claim that Iran was planning embassy attacks.”
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“”The administration didn’t present evidence to Congress regarding even one embassy. The four embassies claim seems to be totally made up. And they have never presented evidence of imminence—a necessary condition to act without congressional approval—with respect to any of this.””
https://reason.com/2020/01/13/more-holes-in-the-imminent-threat-story-on-soleimani/