Making it up as he goes along

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As Palmer Report, George Conway, and others said last week, “president” Donald Trump’s assassination of General Qasem Soleimani had no useful purpose other than to distract from his impeachment. Mike Pompeo confirmed this during his sit-down with Laura Ingraham. Pompeo sat, with a straight face, and said, “There is no doubt that there were a series of imminent attacks being plotted by Qasem Solemani. We don’t know precisely when and we don’t know precisely where, but it was real.”

First, let’s all give Pompeo the definition of “imminent.” Webster’s dictionary defines the word as “ready to take place; happening soon” or “often used of something bad or dangerous seen as menacingly near.” Now, let’s look at “plotting attacks.” There are likely so many terrorists currently plotting attacks that if we had full knowledge of all of them, our heads would explode. In other words, nothing was being imminently plotted that caused Trump to launch a missile at Soleimani other than his imminent impeachment and plotting by the Republican party to let him off in a sham trial.

Nancy Pelosi is well aware of what the Trump administration is up to, and she appeared on ABC This Week to talk about it. She shared that when asked why Congress was left in the dark, the administration said that “we had to keep it close.” Really? Close to and from what? Pelosi said that, basically, this means the administration doesn’t trust Congress, and that is wrong on many levels. They don’t have to trust Congress, but consulting them is protocol.

Pompeo now claims that everyone has been brought up to date via a briefing last week, which Republican Senator Mike Lee called “the worst briefing I’ve seen — at least on a military issue — in my nine years.” Lee went further said that “They had to leave after 75 minutes while they’re in the process of telling us that we need to be good little boys and girls and run along and not debate this in public.” Lee is correct. Congress must be included in any events impacting national security. As Lee points out, Congress needs to “evaluate the scope of our authority to act or choose not to act.” Yep, that’s pretty much how things work in Washington, but don’t tell Trump. He has never grasped how Washington works and on top of that, he has always done what he wanted to do, rules, regulations, and protocol be damned. In the case of possibly inciting war, however, he is dead wrong, and the results could have been devastating.

Things with Iran seem to have calmed down for now, especially since the country had to admit that it accidentally shot down a Ukrainian plane, killing all 176 innocent people on board. Had Trump not launched his missile at Soleimani, the downing of that plane would have never occurred, so in a sense, he is responsible for that as well. Even though we know the Senate trial will be a complete sham, Pelosi is moving forward with handing over the articles of impeachment. Perhaps this will save a few lives in the process.