The US just smashed their top general into pieces. If they want to retaliate it's going to be with more than 5 rockets at the embassy in Iraq.
This is just some hooligan **** and probably representative of daily life risk being a westerner in Iraq.
If your American friend was visiting Baghdad and died in a rocket attack would you be super surprised?

Can't we just say it's used to declare our sovereignty over Iraq indefinitely?

What would it mean to treat him as illegitimate?

Update! Iraqi intelligence officers are challenging the evidence that an Iran-linked militia fired the rockets that set off the escalation. The attack killed an American contractor at a base called K-1.

NYT article: Was U.S. Wrong About Attack That Nearly Started a War With Iran?

A reminder of the sequence of events:

US officials say they have solid evidence (unreleased) of who shot original missiles.

Iraqis doubt it:

Any bio on Ahmed Adnan?

Anyone should be skeptical an intelligence official...

Only an incompetent or disingenious intelligence official would use the words "logical conclusion" in conjunction with an assessment, given they all operate on incomplete information. If they were to use it, they would almost always qualify it.

Well, if you read quotes, unless he is holding back something his basic argument is, "in my opinion the militias don't know the area well enough to carry out that attack, but Daesh does."

It is basically just his conjecture. It sounds like he has no actual evidence one way or another.

Of course, we don't know what the US "evidence" leading them to believe it was Hezbollah, so is it could potentially be flawed too.

GTFO. That was the reporter's paraphrase!!

The phrase "logical conclusion" IS a qualification. It is not an absolute claim of fact. It is saying "based on what we know, this makes the most sense." This is supported by this quote from the source: “There is sympathy with Daesh there. Why do we resort to blaming Hezbollah or others?” He is not excluding the possibility the US is right, he's pointing out what's most likely, especially when no other evidence is available. Your analytical discernment is underwhelming.

But this is really a sideshow. There are multiple facts and arguments from multiple sources that you have not addressed. Are you accepting them, or seizing on one arguably debatable phrase to give the appearance of responding?

A new article helps clarify the probable sequence of events that culminated in the assassination of Iranian general Suleimani.

The claim in this thread was that the US finally responded to a long series of Iranian attacks, which were made because that's what Iranians do, they are "crazy." That was always ignorant frat boy spouting, but now we have even more detail of its vacuousness.

A team of reporters put together a chronology, drawn from analysts and sources in multiple governments. In early May of 2019, the Trump administration imposed deep sanctions on Iran designed to halt all oil exports and destroy its economy. This was to compel a negotiated halt to Iran's nuclear program -- the one it had already halted until Trump reneged on the multilateral agreement. Israel also began launching attacks on militias aligned with Iran.

Iran (very plausibly the author) then launched attacks on tankers and Saudi oil facilities to demonstrate its willingness and ability to close the Persian Gulf. It also likely was the author of a series of cyber attacks to raise the price for torpedoing its economy.

This was followed by the US assassination of Suleimani, and then an unusually bold step by Iran -- a rocket attack directly on US troops that wounded 100.

Interestingly, the article does not include as part of the escalation the attack on a base that killed a US contractor.

So this near-war arose from Trump's idiotic withdrawal from the nuclear accord, and the usual jockeying for advantage by imperial rivals, not from the savage mental illness of mooslems.

How Months of Miscalculation Led the U.S. and Iran to the Brink of War

The Trump administration escalated pressure on Iran to try to negotiate over its nuclear aims. Instead, Iran fought back with violent attacks. At critical points, each country misjudged the other.

Your paraphrasing sucks. To the point, ah forget it.

Here's the paraphrase:

Reviewing your posts, I'll grant that you have not consistently attributed Iranian policy to mental disorder, it was just the one time. But you have claimed over and over that the Suleimani assassination was the culmination of a long serious of subversive Iranian attacks on the US, who finally responded:

None of this was close, according to the Times report.

After withdrawing from the nuclear deal, the US attempted to destroy the Iranian economy with a total shut off of oil exports. Iran responded with defiance, using attacks to threaten a closure of the Gulf. The US and Israel began bombing Iranian militia allies. Iran menaced the embassy. The US assassinated a general, and Iranian rockets wounded 100 GIs.

This was all occurring for the immediate reasons of the oil sanctions -- not out of some timeless Iranian campaign of attacks against the US presence in the Gulf.

You never documented one Iranian/proxy attack on US forces after the 2015 nuclear deal was broken or before the oil shutoff.

I understood that the US reneging on the nuclear agreement was key, but did not appreciate the significance of hardened oil sanctions.

Your analysis was based on a caricature of bad guys, not on anything specific that was going on. It was sophomoric.

You were never an intelligence analyst. Maybe you were involved in targeting data, but you had nothing to do with evaluating the politics and strategic choices of Iranian decision makers, or anybody else in the region. Unless the army is a whole lot less sophisticated than I thought.

You keep harping on the Iranian nuclear deal, as if that's when history started. Iran has consistently promoted proxy actions against the US and their allies for decades, before and after. I've posted multiple think tanks that are much more in line with my perspective than the conjecture you've consistently posted. With that said, if I post my DD 214 showing my MOS as 96B with assignments as NCOIC of the ACE's All-Source Analysis section for CFLCC (they manage CENTOM theater operations, and CJTF-180 (operational command of US forces in Afghanistan), will you ban yourself? This whole narrative about being on the brink of war, was, and always will be bullshit. You made a big deal out of it, and now you look foolish...

And once again, I don't have to prove ****. You can either believe me, or don't. I don't owe you anything.

That's quite the straw man since I've never said there hasn't been friction and subversion since 1979.

But there's a specific context, which you deny. No Iranian attacks on US forces occurred since 2015 nuclear agreement, or before Trump shut off the oil exports.

You insist on a propagandistic bogey man narrative -- it's all because of Iranian subversion. That's background, not chain of events. The US tried to destroy the Iranian economy after nuking the nuke deal. That's primary.

This crisis developed as response and counter response. You use vague, general causation: bad guys be doing stuff to us. Drawing on popular assumptions rather than specific events is not the level of expertise you've presented yourself as having.

Who are you talking about? They both risked war, that's all.

Who thinks a jumble of acronym's would impress anyone?

Demonstrate some nuanced analysis, not party line caricatures of good and evil.

And note the fall back position -- if you can show you really were a political analyst, it would just prove the army wasn't as sophisticated as presumed. But I still doubt it.

Serious question: what language training do you have?

Even if the term was not used, it is completely fine to say "brink of war" when events include one state firing ballistic missiles at another nation's military installation and bombing of military personnel.

Heck, it's even an understatement. It's actually gone to armed conflict.

You have this mindset that I'm trying to appeal to people, in one respect, or another. I'm not here to impress, prove or ingratiate myself to anyone. You attacked my bonafides, I rebutted that attack, and you yet again move the goal post and distort the context it was written under, as if I posted that to impress someone.

This is a discussion forum where I post what I think about things. If you don't like my analysis, fine....I think it's amazing that someone who judges analysis can't think of one legitimate reason why a former intelligence analyst perspective is not as nuanced, in a public forum, as one would like. I've provided detailed analysis from two think tanks, becasue I'm not in position to provide a detailed perspective. I've elaborated why, previously. I'm operating with much more information and experience than you, and my perspective is based on that. I dont know whether that information and experience is still classified, and I have no way of knowing, so I have to speak broadly.


Signal and human intelligence collectors get language training, all-source analyst don't.

I thought stolen valor was frowned upon over there in the USofA?

naw we make them our leaders

Crickets...