US administrations 'manipulate' intelligence to ‘further their political goals’: Senator
US Democratic Senator Chris Van Hollen has questioned the Trump administration’s purported intelligence claiming Iranian Lieutenant General Qassem Soleimani was planning an imminent attack on Americans.
Soleimani, the commander of the Quds Force of Iran’s Islamic Revolution Guards Corps (IRGC), and Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis, the second-in-command of Iraq's Popular Mobilization Units (PMU), were assassinated in US airstrikes in the Iraqi capital Baghdad on Friday.
Hours after the deadly US strike, President Donald Trump doubled down on the insanity of the assassination of the commander of the Quds Force, accusing him of "plotting imminent and sinister attacks" on American diplomats and military personnel.
General Soleimani was in Iraq at the request of the Iraqi government to help them fight Daesh terrorists. He saved millions of civilian lives by defeating the terrorists who were created by the United States, according to some observers.
In 2003, the US invaded Iraq citing flawed intelligence which showed that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction (WMD). The WMDs were never found.
“I think we learned the hard way in the Iraq War that administrations sometimes manipulate and cherry-pick intelligence to further their political goals, that’s what got us into the Iraq War,” Van Hollen said on “Fox News Sunday.”
“They have an obligation to present the intelligence, they did not notify the 'Gang of Eight,' ” Van Hollen said, referencing a bipartisan group of eight lawmakers typically briefed on intelligence matters.
“One opportunity they had [was] just two days ago to brief senior staff at the top secret level, [and] they provided no evidence to support their claim of an imminent threat,” allegedly presented by General Soleimani, Van Hollen said.
He added that “the claim of an imminent threat they have not supported and what we do know is this dramatic escalation is now putting Americans at greater risk.”
“So the question is do we further our interests by killing Soleimani, and everything we’ve seen is we’ve actually increased the risk of war dramatically, we put Americans at greater threat,” Van Hollen continued.
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