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By Mark Gruenberg
WASHINGTON—Many congressional Democrats—along with party presidential hopefuls Bernie Sanders, Joe Biden, and Elizabeth Warren—are warning that President Donald Trump’s targeted drone assassination strike in Iraq that killed top Iranian military leader Gen. Qassim Suleimani will trigger Iranian retaliation, a regional war in the Middle East, or both.
And experts in the region add Trump ordered the U.S. war forces to drone-bomb Suleimani without, as usual, thinking through the consequences. That led Biden to comment Trump “just launched a stick of dynamite into a tinderbox.” The announcement on Friday that Trump was ordering 3,000 more U.S. troops to the Middle East in the wake of the killing only escalated the war danger even further.
Trump’s military launched the drone that killed the general, commander of the Quds Force, the external division of Iran’s Revolutionary Guards, in downtown Baghdad, Iraq. An Iraqi leader of a pro-Iran militia also was killed. Suleimani’s killing escalates the already high tensions Trump unilaterally imposed against Iran.
Pushed by CNN questioner John Berman, Trump Secretary of State Mike Pompeo on Friday defended the killing while admitting Suleimani presented no immediate threat to the U.S. “Any imminent threat to the U.S. homeland?” Berman asked. “These were threats that were located in the region,” Pompeo replied.
Suleimani’s killing does present the threat of war, Democratic lawmakers said. But one Facebook responder to the Democrats pointed out that they—like the GOP—voted last month to pass the annual war budget bill after anti-Iran war provisions were stripped out of it. Sanders made that point, too....
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