Congressman Mo Brooks (R-AL) said Thursday that it seemed intelligence about the U.S. strike of Quds Force commander Qassem Soleimani was withheld from Congress because they couldn’t be trusted with classified information.
“USA kills Sulaimani. Kudos! After 40 years, about time USA fights back against Iran terrorists,” he tweeted. “In classified briefing, it appeared defense & intelligence reps held back info out of concern too many Congressmen can’t be trusted to keep classified info from USA enemies. Sad! Mo.”
USA kills Sulaimani. Kudos! After 40 years, about time USA fights back against Iran terrorists.
— Mo Brooks (@RepMoBrooks) January 9, 2020
In classified briefing, it appeared defense & intelligence reps held back info out of concern too many Congressmen can't be trusted to keep classified info from USA enemies.
Sad!
Mo pic.twitter.com/NONrDmpEa6
In an interview with The Daily Wire he explained what led him to that belief.
“There were questions asked for specific information and the people on the dais simply did everything they could to get around providing the specific information, which allowed the inference that they had reservations about sharing that classified information with Congress in that kind of setting — which in turn leads to the inference that they had a reasonable amount of distrust as to whether shared classified information would in turn be shared by members of Congress with the news media or our enemies.”
Vice President Mike Pence alluded to that being the case in an interview he did with Fox News on Thursday.
“To protect sources and methods, we’re simply not able to share with every member of the House and Senate the intelligence that supported the president’s decision to take out Qassem Soleimani,” Pence told Fox News. “I can assure your viewers that there was a threat of an imminent attack.”
President Trump said Thursday the decision to take out Soleimani was in part due to a plot to bomb the U.S. embassy in Baghdad.
“I will say this, we caught a total monster. We took him out. That should have happened a long time ago,” Trump told reporters. “We did it because they were looking to blow up our embassy. We also did it for other reasons that were very obvious. Somebody died, one of our military people died. People were badly wounded just a week before.”
The president also said Soleimani had his sights set on more embassies.
“There were soldiers, there were warriors, and we stopped it,” he said of the New Year’s Eve attack on the U.S. embassy in Baghdad. “That was a totally organized plot, and you know who organized it? That man right now is not around any longer. And he had more than that particular embassy in mind.”
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