Donald Trump — the man who unwisely pulled out of a carefully worked out agreement by which Iran would quit making nukes, at least for fifteen years — has now threatened to target numerous World Heritage Sites in Iran.
World Heritage sites are cultural treasures.
It is illegal to destroy them.
And that's what Trump’s Defense Secretary, Mark Esper, said (https://www.cnn.com/2020/01/06/politics/esper-iran-cultural-sites-trump/index.html).
When the US defeated Japan in World War II, our military specifically avoided Japanese cultural icons such as Nara and Kyoto — places which your solitary reporter visited as a youth in 1957.
Seems Trump is always mouthing off about something he shouldn’t be.
And worse.
After Secretary Esper contradicted his boss, associate solitary reporter Johanna Jones, who is with Trump much more often than Melania is, asked Trump what he thought about Esper’s contradicting him.
“He’s toast, Johanna. He’s not acting in my interest. My interest is in controlling everything that happens. I’m firing Esper and putting in his place, as Acting Secretary of Defense, my close personal friend Sean Hannity. Sean is my best buddy at Fox News and I talk with him several times a day."
Though Qasem Soleimani, the Revolutionary Guards Quds Commander and the second most powerful man in Iran, was responsible for numerous Iranian strikes that killed many people, including Americans, his targeted killing, personally directed by Trump, has precipitated yet another crisis in the more than volatile Middle East.
And Trump campaigned in 2016 in favor of avoiding protracted wars in the Middle East.
Associate solitary reporter Mahmoud Aziz, our Chief Middle East Correspondent, and our Chief International Correspondent, associate solitary reporter Larry Theis, just texted us to tell us that rage in Iran and Iraq about the extra-judicial killing of Soleimani will make it impossible to restore anything approaching normalcy in our Middle East foreign policies until Trump leaves Washington for good to take up permanent residence at Mar-a-Lago.
Our Chief Congressional Correspondent, associate solitary reporter Melissa Smith, tells us that Hannity’s status as Acting Secretary of Defense has made life impossible for Senate Majority Leader Addison Mitch McConnell (R-Kentucky) to focus on how to deal with Speaker Pelosi on the procedures for Trump's impeachment trial
That’s because Trump’s former National Security Advisor, John “Mr. Mustache” Bolton, wants to testify in Trump’s trial, only Moscow Mitch knows full well that if Bolton were to testify truthfully, no Republican senator could in good conscience vote to acquit (https://www.cnn.com/2020/01/06/opinions/bolton-statement-scare-trump-honig-cross-exam/index.html).