Representative Mast, who had both legs and one finger amputated as a result of a Soleimani IED, does something amazing yesterday in the Foreign Relations Committee hearing.

.@RepBrianMast asks for name of fallen service member that doesn't justify Soleimani killing: "I will sit here and wait..."

[silence]

.@RepEliotEngel: "Thank you, Mr. Mast, I think you've made you're point…"

Rep. Mast: "Mr. Chairman, I have not yielded back my time." pic.twitter.com/V5dagi54QD

— CSPAN (@cspan) January 14, 2020

Militias open fire on people in Iraq who refuse to attend services for Soleimani

Jan 5 - Nasiriyah, southern #Iraq#Iran-backed militias open fire on civilians refusing to attend a ceremony for the now dead IRGC Quds Force chief Qasem Soleimani.

All the while, @nytimes will describe him as a "popular general."pic.twitter.com/cgBLnxzf6Z

— Heshmat Alavi (@HeshmatAlavi) January 6, 2020

Wait at the airport!

Who is watching?

In the American Spectator, Dov Fischer writes in part,

...Recently, Trump did something amazingly courageous when he authorized taking out Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the Jeffrey Epstein of the Middle East, who raped dozens of young girls, headed ISIS and authorized their horrible terrors, and predictably was mourned in the corrupt Washington Post’s obituary as an “austere religious scholar.” Trump’s risk was that he had a Democrat Congress actively politically gunning for him, and any mistake in the intelligence would get him personally into a world of negative outrage from the hypocritical left. The intelligence was pretty good but not as solid as with Bin Laden. The location, rather than in the relatively accessible Pakistan urban area where Bin Laden lived, was in the middle of a Syrian wasteland, with Abu Bakr changing locations almost nightly. But Trump gave the approval, and our Special Ops team took him down, as he died like a dog, like a coward, whimpering, crying, screaming all the way, dead as a doornail.

Given the incredible evil that Abu Bakr represented — who could dispute what ISIS is? — the Democrats were muted in their approval. They did not dare argue that Congress had not declared war. Yes, the Democrats in the House complained that they had not been consulted in advance, but to heck with them. Trump had no choice but to keep the Democrats out of it. These Democrats are not the patriots of the days of FDR and Truman, JFK and Hubert Humphrey, Lyndon Johnson and Daniel Patrick Moynihan. These are different Democrats. They regard themselves as “patriotic,” but they interpret that word as justifying — as their “patriotic” duty — leaking national intelligence secrets to the media, sabotaging the White House at every opportunity. With Adam Schiff long ago having proven himself to be — truly, not just polemically — a bald-faced liar without any scruples, a leaker, how could the President bring in the chair of the House Intelligence Committee? Honestly, beyond all politics, Schiff simply cannot be trusted. And the same with Pelosi. So of course they were not consulted in advance.

And now Soleimani.

Most Americans do not know who Soleimani was. Do not count on the Corrupt Journalist Corps to clarify. Qassim Soleimani, head of Iran’s elite Quds Force, the external arm of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC),was the person singularly responsible for exporting Iran’s Shiite terrorism throughout the world. The extension of Iran’s claws in Yemen? That’s Soleimani. Iran setting up improvised explosive devices (IEDs) in Iraq? That’s Soleimani. The Shiite Hezbollah terrorist group that has enabled Iran to take control of much of Lebanon through that terror surrogate? Soleimani. Iranian military and air bases and personnel in Syria? Soleimani. In Hamas Gaza? Soleimani. Qassim Soleimani personally was responsible for the deaths of more than 600 Americans in the Middle East and for the permanent disfigurement and other severe wounding of thousands more. That all was Soleimani. He was the linchpin. He connected the terror groups with the funding. He knew the bankers. He traveled to Yemen, Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Afghanistan to oversee the creation of Iranian Shiite surrogates and to oversee their organization and evolution. He was the mastermind. Iranians regarded him as their national military hero and wrote songs and hymns about him. The Grand Ayatollah of Iran deemed him akin to his son. That is who Soleimani was.

When Soleimani’s people took their surrogate violence to a new level recently by killing an American contractor, it marked a major moment in the Trump presidency. President Trump has been remarkably restrained in actual fighting abroad, as he has endeavored to scale back America’s interminable overseas conflicts, to bring the boys back home, and to save billions along the way. Trump talks tough, but he has been so restrained that some have noted that, when Iran’s surrogates attacked Saudi interests in Yemen, America stayed out of it. But now there was a direct killing of an American by Soleimani’s surrogates. And Trump hit back incredibly hard, wiping out major Soleimani installations in Iraq and killing 25 or so of his men. Soleimani read the tea leaves, knew the political terrain of Iraq, and gauged the political mess in Washington. Consequently, he had his surrogates in Iraq go wild and attack the American embassy in the protected “Green Zone,” which was supposed to be well protected by Iraqi government forces and therefore virtually impregnable. Instead, the Iraqi government forces essentially stood down, allowed the rioters to run amok, and they invaded and demolished the front welcome area of the American embassy before being driven back.

The Democrats and their Corrupt Journalist Corps were downright gleeful. They called it “Trump’s Benghazi.” They really took joy in feeling that they now could salvage Jimmy Carter’s 444-day, 1979-1981 Tehran embassy fiasco and Hillary Clinton’s Benghazi disaster by asseverating that Trump now had stumbled in the same way. But he did not. In Benghazi, the American ambassador was murdered, while Hillary lied to America through yet another liar, Susan Rice, claiming that some Islamist religionists merely were upset over a short YouTube film that no one had seen, certainly not in Benghazi. We now know Hillary and Rice lied because the Hillary emails that later came out — the ones she did not bleach in time — revealed that, while she was lying to Americans about a YouTube video, she secretly was emailing to her daughter, Chelsea, what really had happened and why.

...Not only was Soleimani watching. Putin is watching. The Korean Doughboy is watching. Xi and China are watching. And our allies in Europe, Africa, South America, Asia, and Australia are watching.

Trump’s political enemies cannot figure out how he does it. They investigate, subpoena, impeach — and still he leads from the front, still he leads the country forward. He has done it on the economic front and in so many other fronts. In evaporating Solemani, permanently reducing his carbon footprint, Trump showed he is not to be trifled with, even with the pests in the Democrat House — the Washington Gnats — buzzing around him and at him. Yes, the Evaporation of Soleimani will have consequences. But human history, especially over the past century, has taught that inaction in the face of rising state terror and tyranny has even more severe long-term consequences. It is a demonstration for many to contemplate. As it happens, Qassim Soleimani will not be among those contemplating it.

Read more here.