Let’s give Dick Cheney a little credit. When George W. Bush’s veep wanted to cook the intelligence about Saddam Hussein – to falsely claim that Saddam was imminently aiming weapons of mass destruction at the United States – he personally trekked to CIA headquarters and pressured the analysts. By contrast, the current apparatchiks simply take their cues from whatever improvised lies pop from the impeached president’s flapping lips.
Hence the sick spectacle on yesterday’s morning shows, where Defense secretary Mark Esper and national security adviser Robert O’Brien labored in vain to explain what the heck Donald Trump had been talking about, on Friday, when he told Fox News that an assassinated senior Iranian had been “actively” planning imminent attacks on four U.S. embassies. (On Thursday, Trump had told his credulous rally fans that it was “multiple” embassies, without being specific; before that, he’d cited one embassy.)
It’s no surprise, of course, that this gang can’t spin straight, much less align their lies in any coherent effort to defend why they whacked Qassem Soliemani and triggered war tensions with Iran. Why in blazes should we trust Trump in the Middle East? This is the same guy who wielded a Sharpie to fake an imminent hurricane threat to Alabama.
This was his key Friday riff on Fox News: “I can reveal that I believe it probably would’ve been four embassies.” A three-dollar bill has more value than Trump “revealing” what he “probably” “believes.”
Nevertheless, national security adviser O’Brien insisted on Fox News Sunday that all Americans should “trust the administration on this.” In his words, “It is always difficult to know exactly what the targets are, but it certainly is consistent with the intelligence to assume they would have hit embassies in at least four countries.”
A few questions: If specific attacks were supposedly imminent, why would it be “difficult to know” what the targets were? Didn’t he just say that everyone had to “assume” what the targets were?
Chris Wallace, the Fox Sunday host, had a great question of his own: If the intelligence was so good – if imminent attacks were indeed planned for four embassies – how come Trump’s team never mentioned that during its Thursday meetings with key members of Congress? Wallace asked, “Why is (Trump) saying it on television, but his top officials didn’t tell members of Congress?”
O’Brien replied, “I don’t know, I wasn’t there.” He simply insisted that he has “seen the intelligence on this” – an imminent attack on four embassies – and he said it was “exquisite.”
Well, that was interesting – because, at virtually the same hour on CBS News, Defense secretary Mark Esper said that he, Esper, has not seen any such intelligence. In his words, “I didn’t see one with regard to four embassies.” Which means that either the Defense secretary is not in the loop, or that O’Brien was lying, or that both officials were simply struggling to cover for Trump’s improvised lie.
Squirming is probably the better word. Listen to Esper on CBS News: “The president said that he believed that there probably and could have been attacks against additional embassies…The president didn’t say there was a tangible – he didn’t cite a specific piece of evidence…What I’m saying is I shared the president’s view that probably, my expectation is they were going after our embassies.”
Esper re-tossed his word salad when he surfaced yesterday on CNN: “What the president said was, he believed it probably could have been. He didn’t cite intelligence.”
Defending whatever Trump purports to “believe” is hazardous to one’s reputation, yet his minions inexplicably continue to do it.
CNN host Jake Tapper asked Esper: “Why is President Trump telling this (four-embassy story) to Fox News” but refusing to brief Congress about it – “unless there was actually no specific intelligence that there was a threat to four embassies?”
Esper’s response: “The president never said there was specific intelligence to four different embassies.”
Soliemani was clearly a bad guy; nobody disputes that. But the Trump regime’s most fundamental problem is that it has no credibility or communication skills. Even if Soliemani had been imminently plotting the worst, most people would be loath to trust the Trump team’s claims; as the old saying goes, a fish rots from the head. Indeed, according to a new national poll, 56 percent of Americans dislike Trump’s handling of the tensions with Iran, and 55 percent say the assassination of Soliemani has made us less safe.
Lisa Monaco, an ex-senior FBI official and homeland security adviser to President Obama, told the press this weekend: “If indeed the (Soliemani assassination) was taken to disrupt an imminent threat to U.S. persons – and that picture seems to be getting murkier by the minute – the case should be made to Congress and to the public, consistent with national security. Failure to do so hurts our credibility and deterrence going forward.”
But the Trump regime seems incapable of making the case for an imminent threat – because it lacks the skills, or, more likely, because there’s no case. And we’re left with the eerie echoes of yesteryear’s lies.
Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, last week on Fox News: “There is no doubt that there were a series of imminent attacks being plotted by Qasem Soleimani. We don’t know precisely when and we don’t know precisely where.”
Dick Cheney, on Aug. 26, 2002: “There is no doubt that Saddam Hussein now has weapons of mass destruction. There is no doubt he is amassing them to use against our friends, our allies, and against us.”
Liars will lie. It’s human nature. As Mark Twain once observed, “It is not worthwhile to try to keep history from repeating itself, for man’s character will always make the preventing of the repetitions impossible.”