Comment: The following are excerpts from a piece Elijah Magnier published just a couple of days before the assassination. It reveals just how idiotic U.S. actions in Iraq have been for the past couple weeks, in particular.


al qaem
On 27th December 2019, several rockets were fired from unidentified attackers against the K1 Iraqi military base in Kirkuk, north of Iraq. In this base, as in many others, Iraqi and US military are present on the same ground and within the same walls, even if they have different command and control HQs. Two Iraqi policemen and one American contractor were killed and 2 Iraqi Army officers and four US contractors were wounded.

The following day, Defence Secretary Mark Esper called the Iraqi caretaker Prime Minister to inform him of "his decision to bomb Kataeb Hezbollah bases in Iraq". Mr Abdel Mahdi asked Esper to meet face-to-face, and told his interlocutor that this would be dangerous for Iraq: he rejected the US decision. Esper responded that he was "not calling to negotiate but to inform about a decision that has already been taken". Mr Abdel Mahdi asked Esper if the US has "proof against Kataeb Hezbollah to share so Iraq can arrest those responsible for the attack on K1". No response: Esper told Abdel Mahdi that the US was "well-informed" and that the attack would take place "in a few hours".

In less than half an hour, US jets bombed five Iraqi security forces' positions deployed along the Iraqi-Syrian borders, in the zone of Akashat, 538 kilometres from the K1 military base (that had been bombed by perpetrators still unknown!). The US announced the attack but omitted the fact that in these positions there were not only Kataeb Hezbollah but also Iraqi Army and Federal Police officers. Most victims of the US attack were Iraqi army and police officers. Only 9 officers of Kataeb Hezbollah - who joined the Iraqi Security Forces in 2017 - were killed. These five positions had the task of intercepting and hunting down ISIS and preventing the group's militants from crossing the borders from the Anbar desert. The closest city to these bombed positions is al-Qaem, 150 km away.

[...]

One single rushed decision emanating from inexperienced US policymakers, evidently following the advice of think tanks, has dealt the US a setback in the region. Was the advice of neocon think-tank analysts shaped by incompetence, or simply by their agenda? They are indeed separated by a great distance from realities on the ground in Iraq and the rest of the Middle East, and US policymakers are clearly not getting sound advice on the region.

All this plays into the hands of Brigadier General Qassem Soleimani, whose only need is to capitalize on American mistakes in the Middle East. The US is making Iran stronger, demonstrating the truth of Sayyed Ali Khamenei's comment: "Thank God our enemies are imbeciles".