The Top US Military Officer: We’ll Provide Evidence of an Imminent Iranian Attack One Day

Eventually, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff will disclose the evidence that shows Maj. Gen. Qasem Soleimani was planning an imminent attack against U.S. forces – but he did not say when.

“I will be happy, when the appropriate time comes in front of the proper committees and anybody else, through history and every — I’ll stand by the intelligence I saw, that — that was compelling, it was imminent, and it was very, very clear in scale, scope,” Army Gen. Mark Milley told reporters on Monday.

U.S. government officials have repeatedly claimed that Soleimani, the former head of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, was in the final stages of plotting deadly attacks against U.S. troops when he was killed by an American airstrike. Yet no official has offered any proof to back up their assertion that killing Soleimani saved American lives.

The issue gets to the heart of the Defense Department’s credibility, which has been strained by military officials’ consistent over-optimistic assessments of progress in Iraq and Afghanistan, especially after the Washington Post published the “Afghanistan papers,” which showed top U.S. officials admitted privately that the military’s strategy in Afghanistan was not working.

National Security Advisor Robert O’Brien last week declined to say what evidence the Trump administration has that Soleimani was planning such attacks.

“As far as intelligence on what his plans were and what the targets were, I’m not going to get into this at this point,” O’Brien said in response to a question from Task & Purpose on Jan. 3. “But at some point, that may be something we can discuss, but it’s not something I can discuss at this time.”

Milley claimed that any doubts about the U.S. government’s case for killing Soleimani are unfounded.

“I know that a lot of people are out there — I’ve seen words like, oh, the intel was razor thin,” Milley said on Monday. “Very, very few people saw that intelligence.”

“Did it exactly say who, what, when, where? No,” Milley continued. “But he was planning, coordinating, and synchronizing significant combat operations against U.S. military forces in the region and it was imminent.”

Yet the Trump administration continues to face requests to show hard proof that Soleimani was about to order his forces to strike U.S. troops. More recently, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo was asked on Tuesday “how imminent” the alleged attacks were.

Pompeo gave a rambling answer that did not actually answer the question. Instead, he recounted how Soleimani’s actions that have resulted in “a massacre in Syria” and trampled on Iraq and Lebanon’s sovereignty.

“And then we’d watch as he was continuing the terror campaign in the region,” Pompeo said at a State Department news briefing. “We know what happened at the end of last year in December, ultimately leading to the death of an American. So, if you’re looking for imminence, you need look no further than the days that led up to the strike that was taken against Soleimani.”

“Then you – in addition to that – have what we could clearly see were continuing efforts on behalf of this terrorist to build out a network of campaign activities that were going to lead, potentially, to the death of many more Americans,” he continued. “It was the right decision. We got it right. The Department of Defense did excellent work.”

Source: Task and Purpose

17 Comments
  1. louis robert says

    « We’ll Provide Evidence… »

    Another Colin Powell type show? — « Soon on a station near you… »

    https://www.americanrhetoric.com/speeches/wariniraq/colinpowellunsecuritycouncil.htm

    Imperial so-called « credibility ».

  2. JustPassingThrough says

    too late a**hole.
    get walt disney to write you fairy tale scenario.
    someting in one syllable words so you can understand it.

  3. Vish says

    We’ll Provide Evidence of an Imminent Iranian Attack One Day … right after we find those pesky Iraqi Weapons of Mass Destruction that we have been diligently searching for the last 16 years!

  4. Garry Compton says

    Boy, having to listen to these guys and the bimbos on the TV, who act like fanatical preachers on the religious stations, and all day long ta boot – Would drive me totally – Friggin nuts. No wonder 1/2 the Americans think like lobotomized idiots.

    1. JustPassingThrough says

      and the other 1/2 don’t think at all.

  5. Mary E says

    Who are they trying to kid? You can’t pull the wool over the eyes of most Americans any longer…they are on to you bunch of lying idiots who don’t know what you are doing!
    If you had proof of anything, you would show it. The Iraq War liars were prepared with ‘proof’ and a general who verified WMDs, but this bunch has nothing…Just Trust Us is their motto….and tell the Congress NOT to debate this goof up in public because it will give more ammunition to Iran! Yep, like Iran needs more.

  6. John Rourke says

    What the US is saying is “They can get away with it” and they are..within the US and it’s lapdog allies..although might be the beginning of the end of the US military power in the Middle East.

  7. Al Carbone says

    same style used here by cops when they kill unarmed old lady. need time to fabricate a story

  8. Natural_Texan says

    Those who forget history are doomed to repeat it..
    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/81edd7ce33e5b19b271d2491c43b7293ee415712568f913282e87929d1ab02cf.jpg
    -Text by Caitlin Johnstone

  9. CHUCKMAN says

    All of the Pentagon and White House people just keep talking in circles, and that’s because what they are claiming is nonsense.

    We indeed know what General Soleimani was doing, and it was something entirely different than Trump’s blubbering claims.

    He was dealing with Iran’s response to a proposal from Saudi Arabia concerned with de-escalating relations with Iran.

    Virtually the opposite kind of activity the White House claims.

    Washington has never gotten away from the Gulf of Tonkin Incident kind of thinking in all its ugly imperial affairs abroad.

    For those who don’t recall, a phantom hostile incident in the Gulf of Tonkin off the coast of Vietnam became the basis for Lyndon Johnson’s starting the massive American holocaust in Vietnam, a war in which America killed an estimated 3 million people, many of them in the most horrible fashion.

  10. David Spero RN says

    Craig Murray wrote a piece about how “Imminent” doesn’t mean soon, in US, UK, and Israeli policy. It’s called the “Bethlehem Doctrine” and says “imminent” just means we have good reason to think something bad is going to happen somewhere, sometime. So, having changed the meaning of words, they can lie without admitting to themselves they are lying.

    1. Mary E says

      Imminent to them also means something that happened in the past that will repeat itself.

  11. rightiswrong rightiswrong says

    Publish, or be damned.

    The USA always lies, WMDs, Gulf of Tonkin, My Lai, Native Americans call them white devils with forked tongues.

    Those Native Americans sure can describe them best.

  12. michael houston says

    sit down….shut up….

  13. jm74 says

    What
    Gen. Mark Milleyis actually trying to say is “we need some time to fabricate the evidence”.

  14. Jozo Magoc says

    First,the Pentagon( Vagina symbol) must fabricate their ” proofs” just like the fake videos with Bin Ladin(= Nidal) with Kalashnikov in a cave…

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