Jan 20, 2020 - The Coming Iranian WMD crisis?

• Tell me again how the "workers" are doing in Libya?
  
  
• How did the crusade for "women's rights" go in Afghanistan?
  
  
• Do the surviving Iraqis have more "human rights" as their country is occupied by ISIS?
  
  
• Would the average Syrians be better under anarchy and ISIS? Because if Iran & Russia hadn't assisted Syria it would have been toppled ISIS-associated militias & backed by the Gulf monarchies, Turkey and many Western powers.
  

A brief timeline on "Preventive Wars"

DailyBeast wrote:In the hours after the killing of Iranian General Qassem Soleimani on Jan. 3, U.S. officials in the White House, Pentagon, and State Department worked overtime on assembling a plan to handle the fallout, only to watch senior administration officials and the president himself scuttle their effort in real time on national television.

The ensuing days became a mad dash to reconcile the intense intra-administration tensions over what the intelligence actually said about Iranian plots, and how best to sell their case to the American public. At the very top was a president who stewed and complained to staff about how the killing he’d just ordered might negatively affect his re-election prospects...

"Yeah, it had been in the works for some time. But it didn’t feel like we were all thinking the same on how to move forward,” said one U.S. official, referring to the strike on Soleimani. “It was like, ‘OK, now what?’”  

For more than a week afterwards, Trump, Pompeo, Vice President Mike Pence and officials from the national security community, including at the Pentagon, held twice-daily meetings and conference calls to make sure all government agencies were on the same page regarding messaging, according to two individuals familiar with those conversations. Officials at the State Department, in coordination with the White House, drafted talking points advising those who would appear in the media to underscore Soleimani’s “malign activities" [I thought "malevolent" was the preferred smear de jure...]

Despite that effort, what resulted appeared to be an uncoordinated effort to justify an action by national security officials who were varied in their answers about the pre-strike intelligence and who struggled to define the administration’s strategy on Iran post strike.

Trump was “preoccupied” and adamant that the administration “get things back to normal” with Iran and framing the strike as a de-escalatory measury , even as he publicly celebrated this massive escalation with Iran and aggressively campaigned on, and fundraised off of, his decision. Part of that confusion on messaging came as a result of abundant input by GOP lawmakers with “aggressive opinions on how to handle Iran,” as one official put it. “I didn’t have any specific targets in mind,” said one senior Republican. “I just thought we needed to be doing more.”

After two weeks of shifting talking points on Iran, re-defining the administration’s policy, Pompeo seemed to edge the closest to articulating a clear response on the administration’s policy when he appeared for a speech at [James Woolsey's alma mater] Hoover Institution at Stanford University on Jan. 13:  “President Trump and those of us on his national security team want Iran to act like a normal nation. Just be like Norway.”

Robbie Martin wrote:i feel like not enough people are talking about how Fox New has returned back to the 'Attack of the Neocons' era after the Soleimani assassination [...it's the] 'outfoxed' paradigm right now, these neocon bastards are multiplying at an alarming rate

New York Times wrote:"People close to him estimate that Mr. Trump spends at least four hours a day, and sometimes as much as twice that, in front of a television, sometimes with the volume muted, marinating in the no-holds-barred wars of cable news and eager to fire back"

TheHill wrote:Trump begins each day around 5:30 a.m. by turning on CNN before quickly flipping to Fox News's "Fox & Friends." He occasionally watches MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” because it works him up, Trump’s friends told the Times.

Trump’s favorite programs include "Fox & Friends" as well as Fox News primetime shows from Sean Hannity, Laura Ingraham and Jeanine Pirro. Trump sometimes “hate-watches” CNN host Don Lemon, according to the report.

The Times also reports that the only people allowed to touch the remote control for the White House television are Trump and White House technical support staffers. Trump also had a 60-inch flat screen TV installed in his private White House dining room, according to Time magazine.

Trump often tweets about Fox News and CNN segments just after they air live.