Trump's Keystone Kops

It's good to see that mainstream reporting on the aftermath of the Suleimani assassination is basically in agreement with alternative media. I was concerned that Iraqi prime minister Adel Abdul Mahdi's assertion that Suleimani was in Baghdad on a peace initiative -- a refutation of the Trump administration's rationale for its drone strike, that Suleimani was in Iraq to execute an attack on U.S. forces -- was going unmentioned in the Western prestige press. But it is featured in "Khamenei Wants to Put Iran’s Stamp on Reprisal for U.S. Killing of Top General" by Farnaz Fassihi and David Kirkpatrick:

[Iraqi prime minister] Abdul Mahdi met with Matthew Tueller, the American ambassador to Iraq, on Monday, and “stressed the need for joint action to implement the withdrawal,” according to a statement and photo released by Mr. Abdul Mahdi’s office. He also emphasized Iraq’s efforts to prevent the current tensions between Iran and the United States from sliding into “open war.”

The United States military stirred a media flurry by accidentally releasing a draft letter that seemed to describe imminent plans to withdraw from Iraq. Marine Corps Brig. Gen. William H. Seely III, the commander of the United States forces in Iraq, wrote to the Iraqi government that the American troops would be relocated “to prepare for onward movement.”

“We respect your sovereign decision to order our departure,” he wrote.

But Defense Department officials played down the significance of the letter. “Here’s the bottom line, this was a mistake,” Gen. Mark A. Milley, President Trump’s top military commander, told reporters at the Pentagon during a hastily called press briefing. “It’s a draft unsigned letter because we are moving forces around.”

“There’s been no decision whatsoever to leave Iraq,” Mark T. Esper, the defense secretary, told reporters. “There’s been no decision made to leave Iraq. Period.”

Although the Trump administration has said that the United States killed General Suleimani because he was planning imminent attacks against American interests, there were indications Monday that he may have been leading an effort to calm tensions with Saudi Arabia.

Prime Minister Abdul Mahdi of Iraq said that he was supposed to meet with General Suleimani on the morning he was killed, and that he expected him to bring messages from the Iranians that might help to “reach agreements and breakthroughs important for the situation in Iraq and the region.”

In Washington, two top Senate Democrats urged President Trump early Monday to declassify the administration’s formal notification to Congress giving notice of the airstrike that killed General Suleimani.

Such notification of Congress is required by law, and to classify the entirety of such a notification is highly unusual.

There are still a few Trump ultras who insist that Trump is playing 5-D chess; that Trump's assassination of Suleimani will end up bringing U.S. troops home as originally intended. But the Pentagon's Keystone Kops revocation of the troop withdrawal letter to Iraq's ministry of defense, along with the Pentagon walking back Trump's threat to destroy Iranian cultural sites, not to mention the U.S. illegally barring Iran foreign minister Javad Zarif from appearing at the United Nations, illuminate an administration in free fall, destroying the U.S. world order.

There is no coming back from this. The only question is at what point does U.S. leadership break its fall?