President Donald Trump shared moment-by-moment details of his assassination of Iranian general Qasem Soleimani with top high-dollar donors at  Friday night’s fundraiser at Mar-a-Lago. The Commander-in-Chief also revealed he authorized the killing, not because of any supposed “imminent threat,” as he has previously asserted, but because intelligence reports, he said, found Solemiani was “talking about bad stuff.”

Killing Solemani as an act of retribution instead of as a preventative measure against imminent attack could be a war crime, legal experts have said.

The Washington Post reports Trump “spoke broadly about Soleimani as ‘the father of the road side bomb’ responsible for ‘every young, beautiful man or woman who see walking around with no legs, no arms.'”

Soleimani “was saying bad things about our country, like we’re going to attack, we’re going to kill your people. I said, ‘listen, how much of this shit do we have to listen to, right?’” Trump said, to applause.

The president also gave a blow-by-blow account of Soleimani’s killing.

“‘Sir, they have two minutes and 11 seconds.’ No emotion. ‘two minutes and 11 seconds to live, sir. They’re in the car, they’re in an armored vehicle. Sir, they have approximately one minute to live, sir. 30 seconds. 10, 9, 8 …’ Then all of a sudden, boom,” Trump told the group of donors, according to audio recordings the Post received.

The Post also revealed that at Friday’s fundraiser, “Trump is heard boasting about increasing the defense budget by $2.5 trillion. To those who criticized his spending and the growing national debt, Trump said, ‘Who the hell cares about the budget? We’re going to have a country.'”

A senior U.S. military official doesn’t appear to be aware of what President Donald Trump is talking about when he says there is a list of 52 Iranian targets he could strike.

On Twitter Saturday, Trump told Iran that he has a list that represents the 52 hostages taken during the crisis between 1979 and 1981. The locations are said to be cultural sites important to the Iranian people.

….targeted 52 Iranian sites (representing the 52 American hostages taken by Iran many years ago), some at a very high level & important to Iran & the Iranian culture, and those targets, and Iran itself, WILL BE HIT VERY FAST AND VERY HARD. The USA wants no more threats!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 4, 2020

A TIME report on Iraq deciding to vote American soldiers out of the country, interviewed a U.S. military official who said he was unfamiliar with the list.

“There are different lists, depending on the nature of the possible targets — missile bases, nuclear facilities, naval bases, airfields, et cetera — but I don’t know of a list that adds up to that number or one that includes cultural or historic sites like Persepolis,” he said.

According to a CNN report, two senior officials said that there is “widespread opposition within the administration to targeting cultural sites in Iran,” if Trump decides to retaliate.

“Nothing rallies people like the deliberate destruction of beloved cultural sites. Whether ISIS’s destruction of religious monuments or the burning of the Leuven Library in WWI, history shows targeting locations giving civilization meaning is not only immoral but self-defeating,” one official told CNN.

“The Persian people hold a deeply influential and beautiful history of poetry, logic, art and science. Iran’s leaders do not live up to that history. But America would be better served by leaders who embrace Persian culture, not threaten to destroy it,” the source said.

“Consistent with laws and norms of armed conflict, we would respect Iranian culture,” a second senior U.S. official told CNN.

An additional official who worked with the Trump and Obama administrations explained that “as a nation,” the United States military “do not attack the cultural sites of any adversary.”

Read the full report at CNN and TIME.

“That’s a war crime”

Appearing on CNN’s “New Day” early Sunday morning, contributor Lynn Sweet explained that Donald Trump’s Saturday night threat to launch attacks on Iranian cultural sites and institutions is the very definition of a war crime and may push some reluctant GOP lawmakers to consider taking the president’s impeachment more seriously.

Speaking with host Victor Blackwell, Sweet said Trump’s threatening tweets and saber-rattling on Twitter likely will give some Republican senators pause.

“What’s the overlap here of the Iran discussion and the impeachment trial and does this weaken the Democrats’ hand?” host Blackwell asked.

“It doesn’t weaken it,” Sweet replied. “I’m not sure if it strengthens it and here’s a few reasons why. I’ve heard your past few segments talk about that these 52 targets Trump is talking about striking include cultural sites in Iran. that is, and I want to emphasize what your previous guests have said, that’s a war crime.”

Related –
WAR CRIMES: Trump Threatens to Target 52 Iranian Sites if Any US Assets Are Hit in Retaliation Over Suleimani Assassination

“Here’s how this works with impeachment,” she continued. “The next step is for the Senate to decide if they’re going to hear witnesses. They only need four Republican senators to say yes on that one to get witnesses. So even though Trump is not charged with anything having to do with this attack that he led that is now so much of a controversy with Democrats, it could give pause to his judgment. It certainly could do that. It is a way to have Republicans react and say maybe we do need to at least have witnesses to try and be thorough in dealing with this president because once he goes down the path of even threatening to bomb significant religious cultural targets, whatever that really means, we’ll see if he spells it out, then you’re going down the path that will certainly bring whatever allies we have left in the world that could give pause to the president through impeachment.”

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