Donald Trump’s story about the Baghdadi raid is already falling to pieces
You knew some real bullshit was coming down the pike when Donald Trump tweeted last night that “something very big has just happened” but then didn’t want to tell us what it was. The story then leaked out that Trump had authorized a U.S. military operation that resulted in the death of ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi. But the story didn’t add up to begin with, and now it’s falling to pieces. Just look at the questions that are piling up already.
– How was Baghdadi still alive in 2019, when he was widely reported to have been killed in 2017? Even the Russian government is openly mocking Trump for having “killed” a guy who’s long been dead.
– If Trump considered this raid to be so crucial, why did he knowingly put the raid at great risk by pulling U.S. troops out of that same region a few weeks ago?
– If this was such a crucial raid, why was Trump golfing at the time it began? If this was a historic military operation, why did no one think to take any situation room photos until after the fact?
– If a seasoned terrorist like Baghdadi knew he was about to be taken out, and he decided to blow himself up, why wouldn’t he have waited until U.S. military personnel were close enough so he could take some of them with him? Thank God he didn’t harm any U.S. troops. But it was awfully, ahem, polite of him to hand Trump such a clean and bloodless victory.
The bottom line is this: even Russia says that whoever was taken out in this raid, it wasn’t Baghdadi. Trump’s decision to sabotage the raid, with his recent pullout from Syria, suggests that the raid wasn’t really targeting someone as important as Baghdadi. Trump’s decision to go golfing during the timeframe of the raid suggests that he didn’t think the stakes of it were all that high. And the suicide bomber’s actions don’t appear to be consistent with how a seasoned terrorist like Baghdadi would have handled himself in his final moments.
None of this proves anything. But given Donald Trump’s penchant for constant lying, the fact that this raid handed him a perfect “victory” just as impeachment witnesses are finishing off what’s left of his presidency, Trump’s seeming lack of interest in ensuring the raid worked, the growing number of apparent inconsistencies in Trump’s story overall, and the fact that even Russia doesn’t want to vouch for him on this one, it’s clear that Trump is lying about something – we just don’t know what. Americans deserve answers.
