Esper Admits No Intelligence for Soleimani ‘Threat’, MSM Still Loyal to Iran Narrative
- Esper Admits No Intelligence for Soleimani ‘Threat’, MSM Still Loyal to Iran Narrative
by Patrick Henningsen, 21st Century Wire
The dominos continue to fall. Despite repeated protestations and assurances from Trump’s national security clique, the public has yet to see any sign of the much-celebrated ‘intelligence’ which the White House claims it has, and which was supposedly the basis for the double assassination of Iranian Quds Force leader, General Qasem Soleimani, and senior Iraqi PMU commander, Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis, on January 3rd.
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Yesterday, US Defense Secretary Mark Esper joined the growing chorus of Trump officials muttering, I don’t know. Although due to his step down at the end of this month to cash-in with a lucrative board position in the defense industry, Esper now admits that he hasn’t seen any tangible evidence which indicated that Iran was plotting and planning to strike four US embassies in the Middle East, despite Trump’s repeated claims the attacks were “imminent.”
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“The president didn’t cite a specific piece of evidence. What he said was he believed,” said Esper to CBS News flagship program, Face the Nation on Sunday. “I didn’t see one, with regard to four embassies.”
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When pressed again, Esper conceded that the President didn’t actually cite any intelligence, but that “there probably could have been” some type of threat, although nothing he could cite specifically. That’s shorthand for, there wasn’t any. From there, things continued to get worse for the Defense Secretary.
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“There was intelligence that there was an intent to target the U.S. embassy in Baghdad,” he said. Here, Esper is employing a cheap sleight of hand by claiming there was intelligence which had to do with the US Embassy in Baghdad, but which is probably the same chatter from December 30th in the run-up to the US Embassy protests, likely recycled again to justify the subsequent illegal drone assassinations. Either way, the ‘threat’ was concocted by Trump’s overly enthusiastic advisors.
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From there, Esper retreats to the hollowed ground of true believer. Indeed, there is a certain degree of faith required with most things in this Administration. In this instance, he believes because the President believes, and so therefore it must be true. The empirical fiat is simply breathtaking:
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“What the president said with regard to the four embassies is what I believe as well. He said that he believed that they probably, they could have been targeting the embassies in the region,” said Esper.
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