PREPOSTEROUS

THE ABSURD TIMES

Latuff: Iraqi votes unanimously for U.S. to leave

Preposterous

We are told that we made the world, and certainly the U.S. safer by assassinating Ghassem Suleimani. It is not widely known that, at the same time, Trump also tried to kill another Iranian leader, this time in Yemen. We do know, but don’t really seem to care, that we killed a major Iraqi figure who was with Sulemani at the same time, only he was an Iraqi. Also not much attention is being paid to the fact that the Iraqi Parliament unanimously voted to kick the Americans out. We also denied the Foreign Minister, or perhaps the President, of Iran a visa to address the United Nations. (Well, what use is the United Nations except to bring revenue to New York?) Also, the “Green Zone” in Baghdad was torn up and a commercial airliner shot down.

That is just a quick summary of the first or second week of the New Year under Trump. Just recently, Pompeo elaborated a bit. He said that several embassies were under “imminent” attack. He would not define the word, but came up with another word that I would really like to hear defined. He said that Iran had to act like a “normal” country. That was a good time to spit out the coffee or something like that in reaction. Now, what does a “normal” country act like?” Well, obviously like the United States since Trump got elected? Now come on, you don’t really mean that, now, do you? I mean, I know this guy grew up in Kansas and all, but that is no excuse for this sort of double-talk. Or maybe it is. Yeah, Iran should act more normal, right.

Now, other information suggests that Suleimani was actually delivering a response from the “Supreme Leader” (no, not Trump) through Iraq in response to one from Saudi Arabia. Now this would be an imminent danger, no doubt, given our foreign policy, but that is not clear. It is clear that Iran does not have much confidence in the U.S. as it did react to the place sited on radar and thought it might be an incoming missle and therefore shot it down. Idiots tell me that it is easy to tell the difference between a commercial airliner and an incoming missle, but with such a short distance and having only 10 seconds to react, it is unlikely that one would take any chances.

One thing that has actually confused me during this entire process is that so-called “rational” people in the discussion have to preface any discussion of how stupid the assassination was have to preface their arguments by saying all sorts of negative things about him, things like “Now he was a bad man, but...” and “He does have American blood on his hands, but...”, before explaining how stupid this whole process was. Now, if he did have good ol’ apple pie blood on his hands and kill Americans, where did he do that? I haven’t heard any reports from Pittsburgh or San Jose, not even Delaware. Just where did he do all this bloody stuff to Americans? Or are we upset with the fact that he attacked ISIS as they were ours to attack? Even so, how did he get our blood on his hands? I realize that Iran has our oil, as is the case also in Iraq and Syria, hidden under their ground, but that really isn’t blood, now, is it?

Oh, and next week the Impeachment Trial should start. It is fixed. Perhaps the most interesting aspect of this all is the desire to have John Bolton testify. Now, those who want him to testify may not really understand what they are dealing with. He should be limited to Ukraine in his testimony, but how would you stop him once he got going. Now trump is more or less a sociopath and can therefore be trusted to do whatever he thinks will benefit him. Bolton leans more towards being a Psychopath and, even worse, or more dangerously, is intelligent, has a fairly good memory and failing that is a compulsive note taker. He has never met a war he didn’t like (as long as he didn’t have to get shot at personally) and everything will proceed on this premise: War is good. Bomb other countries, and so on. Bomb Congress if you have to in order to bomb other countries. Any idea that interferes with his main premise need to be destroyed. So, both Democrats and “republicans” had best figure out a strategy to deal with him before he is sworn in. (No, I’m not even going to go into the idiocy of watching Senators swear to be unbiased and fair – if you believe that they will, nothing said here will mean anything to you.)

We have a few related things to discuss. When I first mentioned elsewhere that Iran indeed had shot down its own commercial airplane, many rose up to scream, idiotically, that an airliner looks much different than does a missle. Well, no, not on a radar screen right after launching several missles at the enemy and suspecting a reprisal attack and having 10 seconds to decide.

What one needs to do in these situations where you have no other information is to put yoourself in the mind of the person responsible. Now, suppose you are in the airport tower where you give takeoff approval in such situations. Imagine also that you are aware of the attacks just recently and the pilot said “asks permission to take off”. I think I would have said something to the effect of “No way, man, no way, not now”. Who would think it was a good idea to fly a commercial aircraft in such tense times?

Also, the Iraqi parliament voted unanimously to kick the U.S. out.

Finally, the commander in chief, though he claims not to take drugs or drink, seems very much under the influence of some sorts of narcotics, prescribed or otherwise. The slurring of speech, the transposition of consonants within sentences, and the varying justifications of the same incident within hours all seem very unlike his past behavior (of several months ago). While the drugs may have been prescribed, he is easily capable of self-medcating. They are, one could argue, mind-altering substances (and few would argue against that), one would imagine that if there is one mind that needed altering, it was his. At any rate, he is mentally sinking.