Mike Pompeo's War Pitch Tour

It's the Sunday show rundown!

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo was on every one of the Sunday shows this week doing his best " Colin Powell WMD " sales pitch to the American people (except for the whole not having decades of goodwill or reputation to squander) after the targeted killing of Maj. Gen. Qassim Suleiman i, the head of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps' Quds Force . The killing was roughly equivalent to assassinating VP Mike Pence and Defense Secretary Esper with a soupçon of added CIA Director, so Pompeo is now trying to reassure us that we have nothing to worry about.

On CNN's "State of The Union," Pompeo began by having to answer why Trump, in one of his McDonald's constipation-induced Tweetstorms, is threatening to commit war crimes :

TAPPER: Is the tweet accurate? Is the US really preparing to hit non-military, cultural targets in Iran, which would obviously possibly result in civilian threats, and almost certainly violate a UN resolution that the US voted for in 2017?

POMPEO: […] We will continue to be. We will defend America. […] President Trump's tweet last night made clear we will continue to do that. And the American people should know we will always defend them, and we'll do so in a way that is consistent with the international rule of law and the American Constitution. We've done it before. We will do it again.

TAPPER: Well, you're saying two different things there, sir, with all due respect, because President Trump's threat on Iranian cultural centers -- or centers of interest to the Iranian culture, would not be in accordance with international law. So, which is it?

POMPEO: Jake, they're not two different things. […] We've always done that, Jake. And President Trump's tweet doesn't deviate from that one iota.

TAPPER: So, cultural centers are, theoretically, fair targets, in your view?

POMPEO: Jake, we're going to do the things that are right and the things that are consistent with American lives.[…]

TAPPER: You said you hope that this strike de-escalates the situation. President Trump is obviously now threatening, in capital letters, to hit Iran very fast and very hard. That does not seem like de-escalation.

Yep! Get ready for a lot of Pompeo either not answering questions or denying things we all saw in all his appearances.

On NBC's "Meet The Press," Chuck Todd pushed back on the statement that this made us safer:

TODD: Can you confidently say America's safer today?

POMPEO: Absolutely.

TODD: How do you, how do you square that statement with the fact we're bringing -- that you're advising American citizens essentially to leave the region if -- particularly Iraq? We have the Homeland Security Department bracing Americans for cyberattacks, saying that, you know, "We know the Iranians had been through our infrastructure. It is likely to happen, and there won't be a warning from it." It doesn't sound like we're safer today after this.

POMPEO: Yeah, Chuck, we're definitely safer today. 100% certainty that America is safer today.

TODD: Then why did we put out that warning after --

POMPEO: Chuck.

TODD: -- the Soleimani -- I mean, we do expect retaliations against American citizens now, correct?

POMPEO: Chuck, you're concentrating on the second and the moment. President Trump is focused deeply on keeping America safe over the long haul. Preserving, protecting, defending America is the mission that we have. It may be that there's a little noise here in the interim, that the Iranians make a choice to respond.

See, Kids! Nothing to worry about! Just a "little noise."

On "Fox News Sunday," Chris Wallace asked why now , after decades, did we take this action. Again, not very reassuring:

WALLACE: President Trump says that General Soleimani was planning a "imminent attack against Americans." You have said it was a "big action that could potentially kill hundreds of American diplomats and soldiers." What was the plan? Who were the targets? And how soon?

POMPEO: Yes. President Trump was right in what he said. So was I. We'll share all the intelligence if we can. I was the CIA director for a little while, Chris. […] We need to look no further than what he had personally done over the days before that where an American was killed on December 27. […]

WALLACE: I just want to press to this degree. The -- he had been targeting Americans and other people around the region for decades. […] Don't the American people have the right to some understanding of what it was, why it was so urgent to take out Soleimani now?

POMPEO: It's interesting. I haven't heard any of the congressional leaders who have seen the full set of intelligence make the comments that you just described. [...]

Has Iran become more aggressive during the Trump administration?    youtu.be   

Funny Pompeo should say that since, once again, Trump did not inform senior Democratic members of Congress , and even supporters like Florida Senator Marco Rubio are not using the word "imminent." Appearing on CBS's "Face The Nation":

RUBIO: Well, I believe that Iran was on the verge of scaling up the attacks that they were aiming against the United States, probably through surrogates in many places, not just in Iraq, but in Syria as well.

Rubio then touted how this is consistent with fighting ISIS and supporting Iraq and its sovereign government.

RUBIO: Yeah. You know I keep hearing that about the strategy. Here's the strategy. We are there for an anti-ISIS operation and to support the Iraqi government, by the way, at the invitation of the Iraqi government.

Seems that invitation was JUST rescinded and, Trump is taking it as well as he usually does ... by threatening sanctions/tariffs on Iraq if they don't "pay us."Or as it's better known: "Fuck You, Pay Me" diplomacy . Trump really is the most unoriginal wannabe gangster.

 youtu.be   

Even worse when you find out this began when someone let Trump pick the unthinkable option according to the New York Times :

So as we gear up for more lying to get us into another war, let's remember to pour one out for the true victim of this whole situation: "Grey's Anatomy" star Ellen Pompeo.

A lot can happen while in hot yoga... who knew? https: //t.co/pScAJ888Ig

— Ellen Pompeo (@Ellen Pompeo) 1578257435.0 

@TVietor08 @EllenPompeo https: //t.co/J24x5fufPe https://t.co/pmPoe7Q5lo

— Jon Favreau (@Jon Favreau) 1578257977.0 

Have a week!

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