Soleimani's "Take-out" was "Morally, Constitutionally and Strategically Correct"

Surprise! U.S. Rep. Adam Schiff. D-California, now wants to investigate President Trump's justification for assassinating General Qasem Soleimani. Soleimani was the commander of Iran's Revolutionary Guard Quds Force. He was designated by President Barack Obama as a terrorist.

If you don't know why Obama designated Gen. Soleimani as a terrorist, you need to do some simple research. Find out how many American soldiers and civilians, and how many other civilians around the globe, he has been responsible for murdering over the last 20 years.

Soleimani was killed a couple days after the American Embassy in Baghdad was attacked by pro-Iranian proxies in Baghdad. Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis, deputy commander of Iraq's "Popular Mobilization Forces," the control entity of several Iran-financed "militia" groups operating in Iraq, was also killed in the U.S. drone strike.

But what was Iran's "minister of terror," Soleimani, doing in Baghdad anyway?

The Trump administration says he was planning attacks on American military and civilian targets throughout the Middle East. It justifies his assassination as one to eliminate a "clear and present danger" to American lives and property.


Now let's compare and contrast Trump's assassination of Soleimani, with Obama's "take-out" of Moammar Gadhafi of Libya.

On March 19, 2011, Obama authorized the bombing of Libya. He had no authorization from Congress to do so. Rather, he relied upon a United Nations Security Council resolution, passed at the behest of his administration, that authorized military intervention in Libya. Two days later, the United States, Britain and France began to enforce a no-fly zone over Libya by Gadhafi's air force.
The U.S. also started to bomb his "assets." For the next seven months, the U.S rained bombs on Libya. That bombing killed several thousand people, supported a rebel offensive and effected regime change.

In October 2011, rebel forces conquered Libya, located Gadhafi and killed him. Thereafter, Libya descended into chaos. During the chaos, the American consulate in Benghazi was attacked and our ambassador and others were murdered by pro-Iranian militia in response to the U.S providing missiles to anti-Assad forces in Syria (Iran's ally).

So why did the U.S. go to war in Libya? According to Secretary of State John Kerry, we didn't. The U.S. bombing campaign was merely a "major counterterrorism operation" that had "many different moving parts." Apparently, the bombs falling all over Libya were the "moving parts."

Speaking on March 28, 2011, at the National Defense University in Washington, Obama justified his bombings:

"The United States and the world faced a choice. Gadhafi declared he would show ‘no mercy’ to his own people. He compared them to rats and threatened to go door to door to inflict punishment. In the past, we have seen him hang civilians in the streets, and kill over a thousand people in a single day. ... It was not in our national interest to let that [massacre] happen."

So where was super-duper investigator Schiff during Obama's seven month war? Why didn't he investigate Obama's "abuse of war powers?"

Obama's Libya bombing "to save the lives of Libyans" went on for seven months. It resulted in the deaths of thousand of Libyan civilians. Obama killed the very people he went to war to keep Gadhafi from killing. Inexplicably, that was in "our national interest."


Trump embarked on a successful 30-second bombing campaign to kill an Obama-designated master terrorist who provided countless IEDs to our enemies in Iraq, which killed over 600 American soldiers while maiming thousands of others, and whose proxy militias just attacked our embassy in Baghdad and were planning to kill other Americans throughout the Middle East.

And the Democrats claim Trump exceeded his powers under the Constitution and laws of the U.S? After the president ordered the assassination of Soleimini, Speaker Nancy Pelosi reflexively bleated he should have asked permission from Congress before ordering the drone strike.


Did Obama ask permission, Ms. Speaker? And do you remember his air strikes on Iraq and Syria to kill ISIS "terrorists?" Where was Pelosi when Obama bombed ISIS targets for 10 months? When Obama ordered 2,800 air attacks on the Islamic State?


When Trump was first elected, a story went around of how he walked on water to save a drowning man, and how the New York Times wrote "Trump can't swim!"

Former Sen. Joe Lieberman sums it up best: "President Trump’s order to take out Qasem Soleimani was morally, constitutionally and strategically correct. It deserves more bipartisan support than the begrudging or negative reactions it has received thus far from my fellow Democrats."

Sen. Lieberman sadly appears to be the last Democrat who is a straight-shooter.

Published in the Moline Dispatch and Rock Island Argus on January 17, 2020

Copyright 2020, John Donald O'Shea

Trump's New Rules of Engagement "

What would have happened if a week before Adolf Hitler invaded Poland and started World War II in Europe, Winston Churchill had ordered the successful assassination of the Führer? Would there have been a World War II in Europe? How many military and civilian deaths would have been avoided.


On Jan. 2, the United States, at the direction of President Trump, assassinated General Qassem Soleimani, head of Iran's elite Quds Force. Soleimani was killed in a U.S. airstrike at Baghdad's international airport.

The Quds Force is the elite wing of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps. It is the special forces' external arm of the IRGC responsible for supporting terrorist proxies across the Middle East. It reports directly to Iran's Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei. The Quds Force was itself designated a terror group in 2007. The group is estimated to have amassed a militia of 20,000 fighters.

The Pentagon states, "General Soleimani was actively developing plans to attack American diplomats and service members in Iraq and throughout the region."

According to Fox News, in April 2019, "the State Department announced that Iranian and Iranian-backed forces led by Soleimani were responsible for killing 608 U.S. troops during the Iraq War. ... He was the mastermind behind the major military operations, bombings and assassinations that accounted for at least 17 percent of all U.S. personnel deaths in Iraq between 2003 and 2011."

Fox News quotes the Pentagon as saying: "General Soleimani and his Quds Force were responsible for the deaths of hundreds of American and coalition service members, and the wounding of thousands more [by providing Improvised Explosive Devices during the Iraq War]."

"He had orchestrated attacks on coalition bases in Iraq over the last several months, including the attack on Dec. 27, culminating in the death and wounding of additional American and Iraqi personnel. General Soleimani also approved the attacks on the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad that took place this week."


President Trump is not the first U.S. president to order the assassination of a foreign military leader engaged in killing Americans. On April 18, 1943, the assassination of Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto was authorized by FDR. Yamamoto was the head of the Japanese Imperial Fleet. He had commanded the attack at Pearl Harbor.

Osama bin Laden was killed by U.S. special forces on May 2, 2011, at the order of President Obama.

So what is better? Doing nothing and letting a state-terrorist like Soleimani kill Americans here and there without consequence? Killing various ordinary soldiers in reprisal for deaths of Americans? Fighting an all-out war? Or taking out a leader — or all the leaders — of an enemy if that might avoid the war?

For nearly 20 years, Presidents Bush and Obama watched as Soleimani and his proxies killed Americans and Jews all over the Middle East. Did our tolerance prevent further attacks?

On Dec. 31, President Trump ordered U.S. air strikes against five Hezbollah targets, killing some 25 Hezbollah fighters, in retaliation for an attack on an Iraqi coalition base that killed one U.S. civilian two days before. Did it do any good? Did the strikes stop Soleimani from hustling off to Baghdad to plan attacks on our embassy there? From supplying weapons to the "protesters?"

Iran is on the verge of gaining nuclear weapons. Once they have them, how do we stop them? Do we have to wait until they launch a surprise nuclear attack on Israel?

Warfare is changing. President Trump has made clear that he has no interest in becoming engaged in a land war in the Middle East. From what happened to General Soleimani, it appears that we have technologies that allow us to track a top Iranian general traveling from Iran to Baghdad. That strongly suggests we have like capability to track and take out Iran's supreme religious leader, its president, its key nuclear scientists or its military leaders.

If Iran keeps up its provocations, Soleimani may not be the last American-hating Iranian to be terminated.

This is not the traditional or conventional way of fighting a war. The playbook has always stated that war leaders send young men out to fight and be killed. But the folks who run Iran had better be careful. This president does not play by the conventional rules. And when he says, "it is not a warning, but a threat" they may quickly find out that he means it.

The president's critics are quick to say that the assassination of Soleimani will only encourage the Iranians to engage in further provocations. Perhaps. But that may quickly cease to be "good sport," if the Iranian leaders ordering the reprisals themselves become the targets of American retaliation. New rules of engagement?

Published in the Moline Dispatch and Rock Island Argus on January 10, 2020

Copyright 2020, John Donald O'Shea

Do Lake Levels Indicate the World Will End in 12 Years?

The December 25, 2019 Moline high temperature was 62°. Climate Change? Man-made climate change?

If so, I would expect Lake Michigan's water levels records to show a slow, steady, increase over the last century.

In September, I spent a few days in Door County, WI in a cabin along the shore of Lake Michigan.

Along that shore, the owner of the cabin has erected a deck that sits atop a rocky cliff. You can stand on that deck and watch the waves crash against the cliff. But this year, something was different.

Last year, the rocky bottom at wave's ebb was covered by only a few inches of water.

This year, when the water ebbed there was a foot or more of water over the rocks. Global warming?


When I was a boy, in the 1940s and 1950s, we vacationed on the Green Bay side of the Door Peninsula annually. The resort had a "L-shaped" breakwater-pier that protruded some 50 feet into the bay. 60 feet out off the breakwater, the resort had anchored a raft.

Some years, the water came up to within a foot of the top of the breakwater. When we swam off the end of the pier, it was over our heads. Other summers, the water was down a good three to four feet from the top of the breakwater. It was only about 4 feet deep. From the raft when the water was down, we could see the rocky bottom; not so, when it was up.

I can recall the resort owner saying that the water levels changed in 7-year cycles. For 7 years, the water would be low; for the next 7, high.

These things caused me to wonder, if there were records of the water levels in Lake Michigan over the last 100 years? Indeed, there are: The "Great Lakes Water Level Table(s) for Lake Michigan-Huron" from 1918 until the present.

As we vacationed in September this year, all my random samples below are for the month of September. (I could have picked any month). Between 1918 and 1998, I sampled every fifth year. From 1998 to the present I sampled every year.

1918 580.51 (feet)
1923 578.61
1928 579.40
1933 577.14
1938 578.54

1943 580.45
1948 579.30
1953 580.77
1958 577.66

1963 577.36
1968 579.33
1973 581.40

1978 579.86
1983 580.48
1988 579.00
1993 580.15


1998 579.66
1999 579.23
2000 577.72
2001 577.46
2002 578.22

2003 577.23
2004 578.35
2005 577.72
2006 577.56
2007 577.23

2008 578.02
2009 578.64
2010 577.95
2011 577.85
2012 576.97

2013 577.56
2014 579.20
2015 579.72
2016 579.99
2017 580.48
2018 580.51

2019 581.63



If "global warming" is causing these changes, one would expect a more or less steady rise in the lake levels over the 100 year period, or at least since folks have been claiming "global warming." Instead, the lake levels in September of 2018 are precisely the same as they were 101 years ago in September of 1918: 580.51 feet.* The 2019 level is only 11/100th of an inch higher than the 1973 level.

So has there been a steady uptick in the lake levels? No. Periodic change? Yes.

Keith Kompoltowicz, Chief of Watershed Hydrology, Detroit District of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, explains that the reason for the high water levels is heavy precipitation over the last three years..


“It’s been very wet across the Great Lakes basin over the last several months and years. ... Fall 2018 was very wet and the ground was saturated heading into last winter that saw a very healthy snow pack. ... That was followed by heavy spring rainfall."


Of course, there are those who believe that "climate change" explains the heavy precipitation since 2017. But does "climate change" also explain the low 577 foot levels seen from 2000 thru 2013?


Oh, by the way ... From 1981 thru 1987, the lake levels were just as high as they have been for the last three years.

1981 580.05
1982 579.56
1983 580.28
1984 580.77


So, is there anything in this data which causes me to believe the world will probably end in 12 years? Hardly.


Was the resort owner correct when he labeled the changes as "cyclical?" The data tends to support that. I'm therefore inclined to wait a few years to see if the "cycle theory" proves true, and to see if water levels again drop, before I'll be willing to consider dismantling our economy.






*. The numbers were adjusted in 1955 and 1985 to take account of the movement of the earth's crust. The International Great Lakes Datum for 1955 set the level of Lake Michigan at 177.795 feet; the 1985 datam, at 178.065 feet.

Published in the Moline Dispatch and Rock Island Argus on January 3, 2020

Copyright 2020, John Donald O'Shea