Pretty sure everyone's heard of the fairly illegal simultaneous attack on both Iraq and Iran and the resulting death of Sulemani. My condolances to the family, and congratulations to whoever gets the promotion, rendering this attack entirely insignifigant outside its rather-obscene diplomatic (and domestic, seeing as it's an illegal assassination against a recognized state without any declaration of war against that state by congress) implications.

Everyone can figure out that it's worthless, chain of command being what it is. And everyone can figure out that it's recklessly endangering; I'm familiar with both al-Quds and ISIS cells operating in various places across north america, frankly, among others (and I kind of like them), and while the gross nuclear program is as nonexistent as the international community said it was, I imagine that if I can touch down anywhere in the world and build a nuke in a basement, so can anyone. It's retardedly easy.

So... only Iranian restraint is the reason our US-based members are still posting, flat-out. I'm on record as being neutral-or-worse to human totalicide (and it's not unintelligent), so...

A simple "site:nytimes.com pedophilia" or search for any spikes in the murder of trans folks in the gulf in 2019 is sufficient to figure out how this usually-totally-inexplicable crime happened. Iran is our major security partner along its northern border, and, well...

...by itself, this is not exactly sufficient for it to, well, make sense. Its costs are very, very high, among them the likelyhood that Trump will never be able to travel, for instance. The large chance of the nuclear eradication of the entire illegal-immigrant populace of the United States. (easy to spot, they look Canadian) The complete collapse of all our other international relations.

https://www.latimes.com/world-nation/story/2020-01-05/iraq-parliament-expel-u-s-military-qassem-soleiman

...total expulsion from Iraq, upon whom this was also a criminal attack. And several other problems, in exchange for, apparently... a TV moment, a crying widow, and... nothing. Nothing at all. Chain-of-command ensures this would have no (direct) effect whatsoever, and on the truly-unrealistic chance that it had crippled Iran, this would just mean we lose a security partner in a region where the US and others had spent countless lives, most of them brown-skinned civilians, to combat insecurity.

All for nothing.

So, at first glance, the cost-benefit ratio would seem to... not add up.

https://www.inherentresolve.mil/Releases/News-Releases/Article/2050464/cjtf-oir-statement-on-the-ongoing-defeat-daesh-mission/

Until, of course, one realizes that it shut down all coalition work combatting ISIS and forced the coalition to shutter itself in its base and do absolutely nothing, no matter what.

This may sound like a bad thing to those who don't recall the history of this board. To the rest, however, who remember the unjustifiable French aggression against the kela'autaji immediately afterwards, the ensuing second Libyan uprising (the one we didn't sponsor), and ensuing dump of the raided weapons until ISIS... went shopping for countries to bomb "isis," not so much. This is a known actor with known routes. There is no mystery here.

(in other belated news, al-Baghdadi died. It gets like that on the battlefield sometimes, and I assume most of the folks reading this have a "it could have been us" sort of understanding. did good work, did us here no wrong. rip)

So, there's the payload. As noted above, it has known synonymicity with the terrorist organization who fairly-openly arranged it.

The questions that remain are the ones between the NYT and the crime in question. Were key members of the military the primary leaders in committing this crime for an offshore power? Various legislators? Is Trump himself a terrorist loyalist, or on the take? There's a line between the payout, Trump, and the crime whose shape and nature is not as well documented.

In the general sense, though, it's partially academic. A known terrorist organization has neutralized all opposition to its militias and operations in an area. This is therefore the primary matter of interest.

Chatter from a known corrupt asset...

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/12/31/world/middleeast/syria-united-nations-investigation.html

...suggests that syria and ensuing entry into europe may be the prime goal, complete with a charming list of lesser bad actors, though this might be as much of a feint as the illusion of an attack on south america, generated through a distaste for historical right-wing dictators and a bit of disinformation. I instead write this down and stick to what is known.

It's probably worth noting as well that these folks have to truck themselves through Uganda, boat over to one of the smaller "ebola states" of west africa from the cape, hike over to the lybian-egyptian border, and do a coastal insertion to get to Iraq. Lots of opportunities here.

Long live the Shia crescent and Rohava.

Since alhambra and decolonization behind lines-ingly,

jd