President Donald Trump dismissed “false” media claims that the U.S. will be party to a $300 billion fund for Iran, as leaked versions of the initial agreement allege that the regime will receive billions of dollars worth of “cash sweeteners” just to sign a “Memorandum of Understanding” (MoU) on Friday.

“President Donald Trump says the agreed deal with Iran is not final,” BBC reported Wednesday. “Speaking at the G7 summit in France, he adds that the US will “go back to dropping bombs” if he does not like the final agreement.”

The president also rejected the $300 billion fund claim, calling it “false.” “People can invest if they want. I mean, what am I going to do — say nobody’s ever allowed to invest? We’re not investing. We’re not putting up ten cents,” he told reporters.

I’d say it’s about 50/50 that any agreement will be signed at all and released on Friday. Of course, that’s a pretty safe bet; you sort of win either way, because you’ve really predicted nothing except that it will be one or the other.

UPDATE 5:40 PM:

Just a few moments after I wrote and posted the above, I saw that there’s been a briefing from the White House on the deal. It says basically what I wrote yesterday, strangely enough, which was this:

At any rate, it sounds like the agreement is just an agreement to ease pressure on Iran in order to have some future negotiations. Why? Is this mainly a temporary measure about oil prices?

About today’s White House briefing:

“We’re not going to be taking their word for anything,” a senior U.S. official said when asked about “compliance” for Iran’s adherence to the deal, particularly when it comes to nuclear development, adding that the U.S. will “work very closely with the International Atomic Energy Agency [IAEA].”

Some provisions: a ceasefire (already in effect anyway, I would say), some blather about “mutual respect” (absurd, I would say, but typical diplospeak), more negotiations for 60 days for a “final” deal (which can be extended, so is basically meaningless), opening Hormuz – and the rest of it is mostly just things that might happen in a final agreement. A wish list, as it were.

What will happen more immediately is this:

The United States of America undertakes, but immediately upon the signing of this MOU, and until the termination of sanctions, the U.S. Department of Treasury will issue waivers for the export of Iranian crude oil, petroleum products and derivatives and all associated services including banking, transactions, insurances, transportation, etc.

There’s also this, which is somewhat opaque as to when it would happen:

The United States of America undertakes to make fully available for use, the frozen, or restricted funds, and assets of the Islamic Republic of Iran upon the implementation of the MOU, the United States of America and the Islamic Republic of Iran will usually agree on the procedures related to the relief of these funds during the negotiation. Such funds, whether retained in the original accounts or transferred, government may be fully usable for payment to any ultimate beneficiary designated by the Central Bank of the Islamic Republic of Iran.

The opaque part is whether this happens right away or is contingent, like so much of the rest, on further agreement.

It’s about what I expected, and I still find it troubling. It also still seems to me to be a way to get oil prices down in order to help the economy and the midterms. It seems to me to signal weakness, and since it depends on Trump’s now-uncertain readiness to go back to war if things don’t work out, that signal seems like an invitation to Iran to declare it has made the US capitulate. And in this case I think Iran would be correct.

I’ve written a great deal about Iran, both in the past and recently, and I’ve always seen it as an intractable problem. The Iranian government will stop at nothing – literally nothing – to stay in power. Our resolve does not include all-out war or boots on the ground. Modern technology and targeted bombings can only do so much.

ADDENDUM:
Professor Jacobson at LI says it more bluntly than I, but I’m in agreement with him:

It’s an embarrassment and sell out of our national interests. And that’s the nicest thing I can say about it. No reason to sugarcoat it. We went from sweeping military success to capitulating because Iran threatened to destroy the world economy and drive energy prices higher.

What a shame.

One of the many reservations I had about Trump at first, and have retained right along, is Trump’s mercurial nature and his loose-cannon tendencies. This can go either way; he’s unpredictable. Sometimes he’s rock-solid and sometimes he says or does things that make a person cringe. He is never completely reliable. The explanation for what is happening now with this deal – and the cause of my own uneasiness since the negotiations and ceasefire phase began – is not clear. But I agree that it has to do with economics. I would add, however, that Trump’s narcissistic desire to make a deal is probably some part of it. I’ve expressed that fear before: that the idea of himself as dealmaker extraordinaire would cause him to make a bad one. This seems to be that bad one, unless there’s a whole lot that I’m missing.

Another thing that has made me more and more uneasy as time has gone on is that Vance has become more visible as spokesperson compared to Rubio. This did not, and does not, bode well.

At the moment, this appears to rank up there with Biden’s retreat from Afghanistan – or worse. I hope I’m overreacting.

The post Trump on the Iran Deal [scroll down for important UPDATE] appeared first on The New Neo.

Platner claims that Susan Collins voted to send him to Iraq; he says that explicitly in the video at the link. He also says the US “destroyed” Iraq, but when I last checked, Iraq was still a functioning country and doing at least somewhat better than it was before the war. As for Afghanistan – which he also says the US “destroyed,” it’s about the same as it was before the war, with the Taliban in charge.

But about Collins:

Democratic Senate candidate Graham Platner said Maine Republican Sen. Susan Collins made a mistake when she voted to “send him to Iraq.”

“We destroyed Iraq and we destroyed Afghanistan, and all the suffering, all the killing, all the dying, all the displacement — we, the United States, did that. And that I’m ashamed of.”

“The anger that I feel is for the people that sent me,” he said.

Sounds a bit John Kerry-esque, doesn’t he?

Collins replies:

“The fact is, that was Platner’s decision to serve,” Collins told The Maine Wire on Thursday, adding, “He was not drafted.”

Additionally, the GOP senator cited Platner’s decision to work for the security company Blackwater, which was investigated by the U.S. government over allegations that it violated international law.

He signed up after the war began, and he re-upped. It was entirely voluntary.

His reply? She made me do it anyway:

Now all these years later, instead of acknowledging that she was wrong, she’s decided that she’s going to blame all of us who — in our late teens and early twenties — signed up to serve our country,” he continued. “That somehow it’s our fault that she and establishment politicians like her, wanted to abuse our willingness to serve, to go send us off to fight in stupid wars that did nothing but make some people very, very rich at the expense of American taxpayer dollars.”

Some facts on Platner’s service – and recall that the Iraq War began in March of 2003:

Platner enlisted in the Marine Corps shortly after graduating from high school in 2003. He attended the Marine Corps School of Infantry, then deployed to Iraq in 2005. He served a total of eight years in the military, including three combat tours in Iraq, in areas including Ramadi and Fallujah. Asked why he served in the Iraq War after protesting it, Platner said, “I thought I could do some good. And I wanted to play soldier. I might have read too much Hemingway.”

After four years in the military, Platner enrolled at George Washington University, funded by the G.I. Bill. Shortly after starting school, he enlisted in the Maryland Army National Guard and served an additional tour of duty in the war in Afghanistan. He returned to Washington in 2011, resuming classes at GWU and working as a bartender at the Tune Inn on Capitol Hill. From 2011 to 2016 he alternated between living in DC and military deployments, before withdrawing from GWU and returning to Maine in 2016 for treatment of post-traumatic stress disorder and other military-related injuries.

In 2018, Platner returned to Kabul, Afghanistan, for about six months as a State Department security contractor with Constellis, where he provided diplomatic security to the US Ambassador to Afghanistan.

By 2016 Platner would have been 31-32 years old.

NOTE: Here’s one of my previous posts about Platner.

See also this post by Ace about Platner.

The post Graham Platner: Susan Collins made me do it! appeared first on The New Neo.

Joe Kent, a top aide to Director of National Intelligence (DNI) Tulsi Gabbard, took to X Tuesday morning to announce his resignation as director of the National Counterterrorism Center (NCTC), writing, “I cannot in good conscience support the ongoing war in Iran.”

Kent, an Army veteran who has two failed congressional runs on his resume, also posted his official resignation letter, and tweeted, “I cannot in good conscience support the ongoing war in Iran. Iran posed no imminent threat to our nation, and it is clear that we started this war due to pressure from Israel and its powerful American lobby.”

I don’t think the Kent letter means much to anyone who didn’t already agree with it – such as the left and the Tucker wing of the ex-right. In it, Kent parrots the Tucker line. The government and the military disagree, as does Trump:

Trump was more than happy to show Kent the exit. “When somebody is working with us that says they didn’t think Iran was a threat, we don’t want those people,” the president told reporters in the Oval Office. “There are some people, I guess, that would say that, but they’re not smart people or they’re not savvy people. Iran was a tremendous threat.”

Who is Kent, and why was he appointed in the first place?:

Joseph Clay Kent (born April 11, 1980) is an American politician, former United States Army warrant officer, and former Central Intelligence Agency paramilitary officer who served as the director of the National Counterterrorism Center from 2025 to 2026. …
Kent enlisted in the 75th Ranger Regiment and applied for the Special Forces before the September 11 attacks. He served eleven combat tours, primarily in Iraq, and retired in 2018, becoming a paramilitary officer with the CIA. In January 2019, Kent’s wife, Shannon, was killed in a suicide bombing in Manbij, Syria. He became involved in political advocacy after Shannon’s death.

In 2022, Kent was the Republican nominee for Washington’s third congressional district.

He wasn’t elected, but he supported Trump back then because Trump said he didn’t want to start wars. Later, Trump chose him for the intelligence job in February 2025, very early in his second term.

Kent claimed in his resignation note that Israel had pressured the US into starting the Iraq War, although Kent wasn’t in the government then and had no special knowledge of what happened. In addition, those who did have such knowledge say that the Israeli government at the time warned the US not to start the war because Iran should be the focus instead.

More about Kent’s run for office in 2021 [emphasis mine]:

In September, Trump endorsed Kent. His prominence was bolstered by Tucker Carlson, who had frequently had Kent as guest on the Fox News program Tucker Carlson Tonight (2016–2023).

So – surprise, surprise – Kent was a Tucker Carlson protege. I wonder whether Tucker recommended him for the government position in 2025.

Kent didn’t last long in the administration’s good graces. For months before his departure there were problems:

In October, The New York Times reported Kent had obtained access to the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s files on the assassination of Charlie Kirk, alarming the bureau’s director, Kash Patel. According to The Wall Street Journal, Kent had been sidelined from the team responsible for producing and delivering the President’s Daily Brief in the final months of his tenure.

Kent has been against military intervention in general after his Iraq deployment:

Kent is a non-interventionist, citing his military experience and the death of his wife. He began to question the management of the U.S. military during the Iraq War, when officials sought to eliminate members of Saddam Hussein’s government. According to Mother Jones, Kent read David Hackworth’s memoir About Face (1990), a book critical of the “clerks at the top” directing the U.S.’s involvement in the Vietnam War. He defended Trump’s pardons of two Army officers convicted of Uniform Code of Military Justice offenses, Mathew L. Golsteyn and Clint Lorance, and his intervention in the case of Eddie Gallagher, a Navy SEAL involved in a high-profile war crimes case; in an interview with The New York Times in November 2019, Kent compared Gallagher’s case with that of Chelsea Manning.

During the early days of the Ukraine War Kent quickly aligned with the pro-Russia anti-Ukraine wing such as Carlson:

He stated Russian president Vladimir Putin’s demands for Donetsk and Luhansk Oblasts were “very reasonable”. His comments on Tucker Carlson Tonight denouncing support for Ukraine as deterring a peace deal were repeated by TASS, a Russian state-owned news agency. In September 2023, Kent described the Biden administration’s strategy as immoral, arguing that the U.S. is fueling a prolonged war that is “unsustainable” for Ukraine. Kent has specifically stated that the policy uses the Ukrainian civilian population as “cannon fodder”, describing drafted Ukrainian soldiers—whom he characterizes as formerly everyday workers and students—as being sent to die in a “muddy ditch” in a war he believes they cannot win. He has argued that by providing continuous aid, the U.S. prevents a necessary, albeit likely painful, peace deal from being brokered.[

So he’s consistent on this. He doesn’t have any special or new information, nor has he experienced some sort of soul-searching political change. Au contraire.

The real question isn’t about Kent’s resignation – it’s about why he was appointed in the first place, and why he stayed in his position as long as he did.

The post Who is Joe Kent and why was he the director of the National Counterterrorism Center? appeared first on The New Neo.

In Part I, I discussed the background to Tucker’s profound isolationist advocacy and his hatred of “neocons” as having their origin in his deep anger and embarrassment at having initially supported the Iraq War and then backtracked on it. Although I’m not saying that this was not the only reason Tucker took the pro-Russia anti-Ukraine stance he did when Putin invaded Ukraine in February 2022, I am convinced it was one of the major driving forces. Even the fact that the US was not putting boots on the ground there didn’t seem to reduce his ire, much of which has been focused on Zelensky. I believe he sees Zelensky as very much akin to those nefarious neocons (commonly defined as either Jews or Jew-adjacent in rhetoric, although Carlson is pretty careful to refer to them just as neocons). His animus towards Zelensky is personal, visceral, and intense. I mentioned this Carlson quote about Zelensky in Part I, and it’s time to revist it:

“Now you see [Zelensky] on television, and it’s true you might form a different impression. Sweaty and rat-like, a comedian turned oligarch, a persecutor of Christians, a friend of BlackRock.”

Sweaty and rat-like – but what’s this “persecutor of Christians” business? (Zelensky is Jewish, by the way.) Carlson’s accusation is related to Zelensky’s ban on certain Eastern Orthodox clerics, although that was done not because of their religion but because they are pro-Russian propagandists in a time of war waged against Ukraine by Russia. There was no persecution of Christians as a whole in Ukraine; almost all Ukrainians are Christians:

Tucker Carlson recently claimed that Zelensky has “banned the Christian faith in his country and arrested nuns and priests.” Though purporting to speak on behalf of religious liberty, in reality Carlson is playing fast and loose with the truth and endangering the lives of Ukrainian believers.

The Moscow-backed clergy being arrested in Ukraine are not neutral, but actively working for the Kremlin, some contributing directly to the deaths of hundreds of Ukrainian women and children. These arrests are not merely a whim of President Zelensky either: Eighty-five percent of Ukrainians polled favor the government taking action against these representatives of the Russian Orthodox Church who are causing mayhem in Ukraine—66 percent of Ukrainians want the Russian Orthodox Church banned completely in Ukraine.

Or, as Google’s AI says:

Tucker Carlson claimed that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy “banned a Christian faith” (referring to the Ukrainian Orthodox Church, or UOC) in the country and arrested its priests and nuns.
However, this claim is misleading and inaccurate. The Ukrainian government has not banned the entire Christian faith or all Orthodox Christianity. Instead, it has taken actions against the Ukrainian Orthodox Church (UOC), a specific denomination that has historical ties and alleged administrative links to the Russian Orthodox Church, which explicitly supports Russia’s war against Ukraine.
Key points regarding the situation:

Targeted Actions, Not a Total Ban: Ukrainian authorities have not banned the entire Christian faith, which is the predominant religion in Ukraine. They have targeted the UOC based on national security concerns, specifically its affiliation with the Moscow Patriarchate.

National Security Justification: The Ukrainian government and a majority of Ukrainians justify these actions because some UOC clergy have reportedly spread pro-Moscow propaganda, housed spies, and actively worked for the Kremlin, actions viewed as a threat to Ukraine’s sovereignty.

Later, after October 7, a major theme of Carlson’s programs has been that it’s the Jews of Israel who are targeting Christians. That’s a similar message to the one he broadcast about the Jewish Zelensky back in 2022. Tucker is and always was a Christian, but he seems to talk more openly about his Christianity these days. His focus is on Christians as being under increasing threat, which they certainly are in some corners of the world: but from Islam and from the left, not from Israel. He doesn’t seem to pay attention to those threats; he concentrates on what he considers the threat to Christians from the Jews of Israel – one of the only countries in the Middle East that allows Christians to worship freely.

Tucker has interviewed a number of guests who convey that message loud and clear (please see this for details). I believe that’s part of the origin of Tucker’s rage at “Christian Zionists” which he expressed when speaking recently in his interview with Nick Fuentes. That’s not just my speculation, either; he explicitly states as much. It’s well worth reading the entire linked article, but here’s an excerpt:

“I did say something [in the Fuentes interview] that I really regret saying that I didn’t fully mean. I said it because I was mad… I said something to the effect of, ‘I despise Christian Zionists.’ And I’m just sorry that I said that, because I don’t… Some of the nicest people I know are Christian Zionists… I want to be very specific about what I was talking about. In at least a couple of different occasions, the Israeli government bombed churches in Gaza and killed a bunch of Christians. And not an accident, of course.” …

There are tragedies in every war, but Carlson’s “not an accident” claim—used to excuse his tirade against Christian Zionists—turns unintended collateral damage into an intentional crime. It mirrors Hamas propaganda: take one image, strip away context, and weaponize it against Israel.

By alleging Israel “bombs churches” and kills Christians deliberately, Carlson revives one of history’s oldest antisemitic tropes—an updated “Christ-killer” story for the social-media age.

In reality, two very different incidents occurred in Gaza. In October 2023, an Israeli airstrike targeting a Hamas command post struck near the Greek Orthodox Church of St. Porphyrius in Gaza City. Hamas terrorists had been operating nearby, and debris from the strike collapsed an adjacent building, killing civilians sheltering there. On July 17, 2025, Israeli tank shrapnel from a Hamas-initiated firefight hit part of the Holy Family Catholic Church in Zeitoun, injuring several. In neither case was the church itself targeted. Israel expressed regret, investigated, and presented evidence of Hamas activity in the area.

This is what happens when a terror group fights from residential blocks, hospitals, schools—and yes, churches. The blame belongs to Hamas, which uses its own civilians as shields, not to Israel.

There’s also Carlson’s high praise for Holocaust-denying (that is, he thinks the Holocaust was accidental rather than purposeful on the part of the Nazis, a claim that flies in the face of facts and the timeline) Darryl Cooper. Cooper apparently also thinks Churchill rather than Hitler was the villain of WWII.

I believe that Carlson now sees just about everything in foreign affairs, and some things in domestic affairs, through that filter of “Jewish warmongering neocons who are out to murder Christians.” It all fits together in his mind – his upset about the Iraq War, his subsequent fondness for Putin and hatred for Zelensky, his recent accusations that Israelis are murdering Christians on purpose, his showcasing of someone like Fuentes, his anger at any US intervention in any foreign country, his rage at Jews in the US he sees as promoting war because of “dual loyalties,” his ire at Christian Zionists, and on and on and on in that same vein.

Many people seem to think that Carlson’s main motive for all of this is money, and that it’s a relatively recent development. I disagree, although Putin and Qatar may indeed be paying Carlson or boosting his algorithm with bots, or both. But Tucker does not need the money and never has; he’s independently wealthy. Not that he minds getting more money, but his motives are and always have been power and fame, influence and clicks, and the aforementioned anger at “neocons.” He may also have presidential or at least political ambitions, although I have no evidence for that.

I also watched some of Carlson’s speech at the Charlie Kirk memorial, as he compared Kirk to Jesus and said that Jesus was murdered by “a bunch of guys” in power, whom Jesus had criticized, and who were “sitting around in a lamplit room” in Jerusalem “eating hummus, thinking about what do we do about this guy telling the truth about us” (then loudly) “We must make him stop talking!!!” “And there’s always one guy with the bright idea – and I can just hear him say ‘why don’t we just kill him? That’ll shut him up; that’ll fix the problem.'” Then giggly loud laughter from Carlson, with his face scrunching up. It’s really a sight to behold:

So I contend that there is nothing mysterious about this “evolution” of Carlson’s, which has been going on for over twenty years.

And make of the following what you will: Carlson also claims to have been molested by a demon, an occurrence he dates from some time in the spring of 2023. He describes the incident here; the article appeared in November of 2024, although he said the event had occurred about a year and a half earlier. It’s even better to watch this short clip where he explains what happened and adds that it transformed him. He immersed himself in reading the Bible after that, something it appears that he’d not done much of before:

Then again, perhaps it was the dogs? Did he not let sleeping dogs lie?

[Part III coming up … ]

[ADDENDUM:

Part I can be found here.
Part III can be found here.]

The post Whatever happened to Tucker Carlson?: Part II appeared first on The New Neo.

Reports are that somewhere between one-third and one-half of the IAF took to the skies on Friday night — a remarkable feat in itself if you know anything about what it takes to ready and arm a sophisticated warplane — and every single one of them returned home safely.

An open-source intelligence writer who uses the handle Raylan Givens — I’ve followed and trusted him for a couple of years now — gave the rundown on the operation, “courtesy of IDF Radio and with the approval of the military censor.”

“The attack destroyed ALL of Iran’s long-range surface-to-air missile batteries,” according to Givens’ translation of the IDF Radio report. “All long-range detection radars were also destroyed. Iran is left with only short-range batteries of local Iranian models.”

Again bowing to Western pressure, Israel left Iran’s oil and nuclear facilities intact, but the IAF brutalized Iran’s missile production sites. While “Iran possesses more than 2,000 long-range ballistic missiles,” by most estimates, “the production of new missiles was crippled. From now on, Iran will operate with a finite supply because the stockpile it has will not be able to grow for months or years.”

In addition, reports are that Iran’s strategic defense was set back 2-3 years – and with the Ukraine war on its hands, Russia will have trouble stepping up to the plate and re-supplying Iran. In addition, a site that was struck was involved in nuclear weaponization, and there were strikes in Syria and Iraq which I’ve read had to do with disabling some of their ability to detect Israel’s airplanes overflying those countries.

All in all, quite an undertaking. It points out that Israel probably could have done all of this some time ago, but was apparently holding back until it could be fully justified. The other message it must send to terrorist sympathizers and enablers in Iran, Syria, and Iraq is: “we can get you any time we want.”

The post Israel makes life hard for the Iranian regime appeared first on The New Neo.

Well, that guy is no longer walking the face of the earth:

?We eliminated terrorist Aziz Salha, who took part in the Ramallah lynching in Oct. 2000, in the area of Deir El Balah in central Gaza.

Salha took part in the brutal lynching of Sergeant First Class (Res.) Yosef Avrahami and Corporal (Res.) Vadim Norzhich in Ramallah in 2000.… pic.twitter.com/NHWw8pF2IO

— Israel Defense Forces (@IDF) October 3, 2024

However, he had been in an Israeli prison until 2011, when he was one of the people (Sinwar being another) who was released in the Shalit exchange, which turns out to have been one of the worst decisions Israel ever made.

The Ramallah lynching occurred almost exactly 24 years ago, on Oct 12, 2000. Here’s a brief and somewhat sanitized description:

According to the Israeli civil rights organisation Shurat HaDin, Salha “repeatedly stabbed the dying Corporal Vadim Nurzhitz and threw his body from the window. Aziz [Salha], one of the leading perpetrators of the lynch [sic] in Ramallah, was not satisfied with the brutal murder. The bodies were then abused for hours to joyous reactions from the incited mob of supporters in the street.”

That was one of many indications of the bloodthirstiness of the Gazan mob, so that 10/7/2023 should have come as no surprise.

NOTE: This is good news: a Yazidi girl kidnapped by ISIS ten years ago in Iraq at the age of 11 has been rescued at the age of 21 in Gaza. ISIS had given or sold her to what is described as a “Palestinian Hamas-ISIS member,” who held her captive all these years. About 6,000 Yazidis were captured around that time (2014), and 3,500 have since been rescued or freed. The details of how this girl was freed have not been revealed, but apparently Israel and the US were involved.

The post Another terrorist gone, another captive freed appeared first on The New Neo.

Tucker Carlson [said]:
___________________________________

It’s been inevitable since February 16 2016. that’s the day Donald Trump made a blood enemy of the largest and most powerful organization in human history which would be the federal government.

…we can point to the precise moment that permanent Washington decided to send Donald Trump to prison. here it is it’s from the Republican candidates debate in Greenville South Carolina:

“we should have never been in Iraq; we have destabilized the Middle East. They lied, okay. They said there were weapons of mass destruction there were none and they knew there were none there were no weapons of mass destruction.”
___________________________________

[huxley adds] I agree with Tucker much of the time. But this sounds like a terrible oversimplification.

Within two years of the Iraq War’s beginning Democrats were thoroughly opposed to the Iraq War and Obama rode that horse all the way to the White House. The Deep State was more than OK with Obama.

The federal government’s problem with Trump was his populist threat to their power.

I’m in complete agreement with huxley here.

But I want to add that, in my opinion, although Tucker is good on some things he is bad on others. This time what he says is not only a “terrible oversimplification,” it’s also factually incorrect or at least very incomplete because actually Trump had been speaking out consistently against the war in Iraq long before he was running for president and long before that debate.

I know this because I wrote about it in October of 2015 for the Weekly Standard, in an article which now can be found at this link in the Washington Examiner. My piece was about Trump’s animus towards George W. Bush, whom he started excoriating for the Iraq War back in 2007 and 2008. Here’s a quote [emphasis added]:

But the sharpest of Trump’s attacks on George W. had occurred much earlier, in a series of interviews in 2007 and 2008, when neither Trump nor Jeb Bush were candidates. For example, in a 2008 interview with Wolf Blitzer, Trump advocated Bush’s impeachment, while adding how much he likes Nancy Pelosi:

“TRUMP:…It was almost — it just seemed like [Pelosi] was going to really look to impeach Bush and get him out of office, which, personally, I think would have been a wonderful thing. BLITZER: Impeaching him? TRUMP: Absolutely, for the war, for the war.”

In the same interview, Trump repeated the familiar “Bush lied about WMDs” mantra, and when Blitzer questioned whether he actually believed that, Trump repeated it:

“TRUMP:…Bush got us into this horrible war with lies, by lying, by saying they had weapons of mass destruction, by saying all sorts of things that turned out not to be true. BLITZER: Their argument is, they weren’t lying, that that was the intelligence that he was presented, and it was not as if he was just lying about it. TRUMP: I don’t believe that. BLITZER: You believe that it was a deliberate lie? TRUMP: I don’t believe it…The fact is that he lied.”

Later in the interview, Trump said that Bush “is probably the worst president in the history of the United States.” It wasn’t the first time Trump had evaluated Bush that way, either; in 2007 he had made the same charge when he agreed that Bush was the worst president in U.S. history.

But perhaps the most negative ad hominem attack Trump had ever launched against George W. Bush was in a 2008 interview in which he called Bush “evil.” In the same interview, he also criticized Bush for not talking to Iran, and praised Obama in contrast, saying that he believes Obama will lead through consensus as president, and “not be a bull run, like Bush—he just did whatever the hell he wanted.”

So the Feburary 16, 2016 debate that Tucker seems to think was some turning point or watershed moment was no such thing.

The post Tucker Carlson on Trump and the Iraq War appeared first on The New Neo.

[Gen. Gholamali] Abuhamzeh, commander of the Revolutionary Guards in the southern province of Kerman, foreshadowed a possible attack on “vital American targets” located in the Strait of Hormuz in retaliation of Soleimani’s death.

“The Strait of Hormuz is a vital point for the West and a large number of American destroyers and warships cross there,” Abuhamzeh said according to a Reuters report, citing Tasnim news agency.

“Vital American targets in the region have been identified by Iran since long time ago … some 35 U.S. targets in the region, as well as Tel Aviv, are within our reach.”

Note the specific number, 35, plus the added threat to Israel.

Trump’s counter was therefore quite apropos and an “escalation” only in the numbers involved:

Iran is talking very boldly about targeting certain USA assets as revenge for our ridding the world of their terrorist leader who had just killed an American, & badly wounded many others, not to mention all of the people he had killed over his lifetime, including recently….

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 4, 2020

….hundreds of Iranian protesters. He was already attacking our Embassy, and preparing for additional hits in other locations. Iran has been nothing but problems for many years. Let this serve as a WARNING that if Iran strikes any Americans, or American assets, we have…..

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 4, 2020

….targeted 52 Iranian sites (representing the 52 American hostages taken by Iran many years ago), some at a very high level & important to Iran & the Iranian culture, and those targets, and Iran itself, WILL BE HIT VERY FAST AND VERY HARD. The USA wants no more threats!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 4, 2020

But it was very easy to miss the back-and-forth nature of the trash-talking. NBC’s coverage here seems typical. The headline was “Trump threatens attacks on 52 sites if Iran retaliates for Soleimani killing Trump tweeted the targets ‘WILL BE HIT VERY FAST AND VERY HARD’ if Iran retaliates for the killing of Qassem Soleimani.” If one reads just the headline – as so many people do – it appears that Trump’s threat just came out of the blue. It’s only way way down much later in the article that there’s a mention of the quote threat from Iran that set it off. But I doubt most people get that far.

When I first took notes for this post, I looked at this Times article which began this way:

Iran condemned Donald Trump on Sunday as a “terrorist in a suit” after the U.S. president threatened to hit 52 Iranian sites hard if Tehran attacks Americans or U.S. assets in retaliation for the killing of military commander Qassem Soleimani.

“Like ISIS, Like Hitler, Like Genghis! They all hate cultures. Trump is a terrorist in a suit. He will learn history very soon that NOBODY can defeat ‘the Great Iranian Nation & Culture’,” Information and Telecommunications Minister Mohammad Javad Azari-Jahromi tweeted.

Soleimani, Iran’s pre-eminent military commander, was killed on Friday in a U.S. drone strike…

Iranian propaganda led the way.

But now, looking at the same article again, I see that it starts somewhat differently and then goes this way (they keep updating it, apparently). My remarks and comments on the text are in brackets:

Iraq’s parliament called on Sunday for U.S. and other foreign troops to leave as a backlash grows against the U.S. killing of a top Iranian general, and President Donald Trump doubled down on threats to target Iranian cultural sites if Tehran retaliates. [No mention of the attack on the embassy. No mention of the Iraqi threats to which Trump was responding. Characterization of the Iraqi vote as a response to Trump rather than something the Iranian faction controlling the present Iraqi government has wanted and planned.]

Deepening a crisis that has heightened fears of a major Middle East conflagration, Iran said it was taking another step back from commitments under a 2015 nuclear deal with six major powers. [The Times and the MSM have been instrumental in heightening those fears of “a major Middle East conflagration.” It is a pretense that Iraq ever intended compliance with the Obama “deal.” The “six major powers” are invoked to give more gravitas to the idea that the deal was a great one, which is a fiction the Times helped initially convey and now tries to maintain.]

Iran’s most prominent general, Qassem Soleimani, [yeah, he was just a regular old “prominent general”] was killed on Friday in a U.S. drone strike on his convoy at Baghdad airport, an attack that carried U.S.-Iranian hostilities into uncharted waters. [U.S.-Iranian hostilities have been in these basic waters for a long time. Also, note that there is an equivalence here in the phrase “U.S.-Iranian hostilities,” with the US listed first as though Iran has not been the aggressor since 1979. All those “Death to America” chants are just a backlash, you see. Or maybe the Times hopes we don’t even recall those chants, or how long and how frequently they have been shrieked.]

An Iranian government minister denounced Trump as a “terrorist in a suit” after the U.S. president sent a series of Twitter posts on Saturday threatening to hit 52 Iranian sites…[I’d bet the Times agrees with the Iranian characterization]

Democratic critics of the Republican president have said Trump was reckless in authorizing the strike, and some said his comments about targeting cultural sites amounted to threats to commit war crimes. [Let’s add that to the other bogus impeachment charges.]…

It was Trump’s withdrawal of the United States from the deal in 2018 and reimposition of sanctions on Iran that touched off a new spiral of tensions after a brief thaw following the accord. [Yes, when the US is paying a country to pretend to agree to something, and allows that country to use the money to fund terrorism and buy influence around the world, then there’s every reason for that country to ease up on the attacks for a bit. Don’t bite too hard the hand that feeds you.]

On Sunday, Iran further distanced itself from the agreement, saying it would continue to cooperate with the U.N. nuclear watchdog but would respect no limits to its uranium enrichment work. [Like it was ever going to abide by the agreement in the first place.]

That meant “there will be no limitations in enrichment capacity, level of enrichment and research and development and … it will be based on Iran’s technical needs,” state TV said, quoting a government statement. It said the rollback of its nuclear commitments could be reversed if Washington lifted sanctions on Tehran. [The sanctions are really hurting them.]

As head of the Revolutionary Guards’ Quds Force, Soleimani masterminded Iran’s clandestine and military operations abroad, creating an arc of Shi’ite power with the help of proxy militias confronting the regional might of the United States, Israel and Saudi Arabia. [Soleimani was just trying to take over the governments of other Middle Eastern countries to counter that big bad troika, that axis of evil, the US, Israel, and the Saudis. Forget that this ambition by Iran has been going on long, long, before Trump.]

Hundreds of thousands of mourners, many chanting, beating their chests and wailing in grief, turned out across Iran to show their respects after his body was returned to a hero’s welcome. [No doubt they did this. Orchestrated mourning mixed with some sincere mourning from those who back the Iranian government’s terror and imperialist reach. So what?]

I could go on, but why bother?

And in fact, sometimes I wonder why I fisk the Times at all anymore. I think it’s because I know plenty of people who think it’s the paper of record, and I believe it still has tremendous influence. As propaganda, it’s rather brilliant and rather subtle in the sense that, if the reader doesn’t know the history and the counter-arguments, it is quite persuasive.

The post The aggression starts with Trump appeared first on The New Neo.

SCOOP: Senior US government official confirms to CBS News the strike was in response to active threat to US interests in the region personally overseen by GEN Suleimani. Official made clear US prepared to take further action if diplomats, soldiers threatened by his replacement.

— Catherine Herridge (@CBS_Herridge) January 3, 2020

The very predictable reaction of Democrats is typified by this Elizabeth Warren tweet:

Soleimani was a murderer, responsible for the deaths of thousands, including hundreds of Americans. But this reckless move escalates the situation with Iran and increases the likelihood of more deaths and new Middle East conflict. Our priority must be to avoid another costly war.

— Elizabeth Warren (@ewarren) January 3, 2020

In other words, there’s a formulaic condemnation of Suleimani as a dangerous killer. But it’s followed by fears of a huge war to follow, and words like “reckless” and “escalation.” Many responses also express complaints that the action was done without Congressional approval – as though a strike on a terrorist like this could or should be subjected to Congressional debate and a vote.

If you study the entire thread under Elizabeth Warren’s tweet, you’ll find that many of the respondents criticize her for criticizing Suleimani. Yes, that’s really what many are saying; here’s an example:

"[bogeyman] was a murderer… BUT" -> this is the formula used by useful idiots of warmongers

Warren is helping Trump sell a war of aggression on Iran with this ridiculous take

This is the proper take: "The US is the aggressor. No war on Iran! Period"https://t.co/pGxW9BppiR

— Ben Norton (@BenjaminNorton) January 3, 2020

Liz Warren isn’t leftist enough for them.

However, there is a very real dilemma when faced with Iran: how to respond in a way that doesn’t lead to a widespread war, a war no one wants, including Trump. I don’t have an answer, but I understand the problem. Appeasement and weakness do not work. Provocations must be met with a strong and unequivocal response. But they do run the risk of being met with even more provocation. Where does it end?

One thing I have little doubt about is this: if Suleimani had succeeded in mounting a new attack on US troops in the area, and Trump had done nothing to stop it, he would have been roundly criticized for that.

Another thing that has seemed clear for several years is that Iran is very influential in the Iraqi government. Will this latest action have any effect on that situation?

And how will the Iranian and/or the Iraqi people respond to it all? Will they cheer – and if so, will it be privately, or publicly?

UPDATE: Here’s an interesting Twitter exchange:

That guy has tweeted that we see Iran responsible for the events in Baghdad & we will respond to Iran.
1st: You can’t do anything.
2nd: If you were logical —which you’re not— you’d see that your crimes in Iraq, Afghanistan… have made nations hate you. https://t.co/hMGOEDwHuY

— Khamenei.ir (@khamenei_ir) January 1, 2020

“You can’t do anything”??

There are a lot of comments in the Twitter thread saying: “This didn’t age well.”

The post Trump’s threats were not empty: Suleimani, head of Iranian terrorism, killed in Baghdad appeared first on The New Neo.

After all, it reminds people of the actual Benghazi debacle, as well as implicitly indicating that it was a debacle on the part of the Obama administration.

It also invites contrast:

We sent a hundred Marines to beef up security at the US embassy in Baghdad, and our ambassador didn't even have to send 29 cables begging for them first.

— Razor (@hale_razor) December 31, 2019

The Anti-Benghazi!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) December 31, 2019

In addition, there’s this inconvenient fact.

But the MSM is pushing the idea that this reflects poorly on Trump, and they’re lying in the process:

All hands on deck at @nytimes, pushing simply false narrative that attack on US Iraq embassy was –

(1) Done by "protesters." It was Iran militias.

(2) Resp to air strikes. It was months-long escalation.

(3) Shift from anti-Iran protests. It was condemned by those protesters. pic.twitter.com/UizaOhDMby

— Omri Ceren (@omriceren) January 1, 2020

And why shouldn’t they do this and say this? After all, it works to a certain degree, as it did with the original Benghazi. It doesn’t work as well as it used to, but the MSM still is able to construct and shape the narrative for a vast number of people, and they will not stop because the truth is dangerous to them at this point.

The post “Trump’s Benghazi” appeared first on The New Neo.