About that briefing

About that briefing


The Secretary of State and Defense as well as the CIA Director and the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs went up to the hill for a long delayed briefing on the Iran gambit. As you might imagine, the Democrats weren't impressed:
I just left the administration's briefing on the strike that killed Qasem Soleimani. They tried, unsuccessfully, to conjure up a rationale for the president's reckless decision.

It was sophomoric and utterly unconvincing. I left the room more troubled than when I went in.
— Gerry Connolly (@GerryConnolly) January 8, 2020
But this might surprise you a little bit:

 
I had hoped and expected to see more information outlining the moral and legal justification. The briefing lasted only 75 minutes whereupon our briefers left. This is not the biggest problem I had with the briefing, which I might add is the worst briefing I've seen, at least on a military issue, in the nine years I've served on the United States Senate. What I found so distressing about the briefing is one of the messages we received from the briefers was "do not discuss, do not debate the issue of appropriateness of further military intervention against Iran and if so, you'll be emboldening Iran." The idea we would be less safe by having a debate or discussion about the appropriateness of further military involvement.
Fox wasn't having it:
....fox decided to cut away from the press conference pic.twitter.com/etOlcFJ3iP
— Andrew Lawrence (@ndrew_lawrence) January 8, 2020
Again, the briefers were Pompeo, Esper, Haspel and Milli. They are obviously lying through their teeth. There was no imminent threat. They did it because Trump was nearly hysterical about impeachment and the Iran hawks saw their opportunity to persuade him to escalate. That's really all there was to it.

Update:

Just asked Graham about the criticism from Paul and Lee over Iran briefing. “I think they’re overreacting. I’m going to let people know ..to play this game with the war powers act, which I think is unconstitutional, is that whether you mean to or not, you’re empowering the enemy” pic.twitter.com/pnlISwkORb

— Manu Raju (@mkraju) January 8, 2020

Of course, .