Tom Cotton Demands ‘Retaliatory Military Strike’ Against Iran Over Oil Tanker Attacks
Shane Trejo
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After last week’s attacks on Japanese oil tankers in the Gulf of Oman, the neoconservative war hawk wing of the Republican Party is trying use the events as an excuse to start war with Iran.
Sen. Tom Cotton (R-AR) is leading the charge, calling for a “retaliatory military strike” against Iran despite the fact that they did not attack the U.S. in any tangible manner last week. He wants the U.S. to play world police, George W. Bush style.
“These unprovoked attacks on commercial shipping warrant a retaliatory military strike,” Cotton said during a Sunday appearance on “Face the Nation.”
Cotton is urging President Donald Trump to commit acts of war to “defend American interests.” He believes that Iran attacked two oil tankers in the Gulf of Oman because of a declaration by Secretary of State Mike Pompeo based on U.S. intelligence despite eye-witnesses on one of the downed vessels claiming otherwise.
“The fastest way to get the fire and fury of the U.S. military unleashed on you is to interfere with the freedom of navigation on the open seas and in the air. That’s exactly what Iran is doing in one of the world’s most important strategic choke points,” Cotton said.
It doesn’t matter to Cotton that the U.S. intelligence community was incorrect about Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction, which led to a war that President Trump has called the worst blunder in U.S. history. Cotton is convinced that the intelligence community has it right this time, so bombs away.
“In 2002, our intelligence agencies, just like every Western intelligence agency, was trying to assess the state of a weapons of mass destruction program, one of the things that states worked the hardest to keep secret,” Cotton said.
“There’s really not much to assess right here. Everybody can see with their own two eyes, those Iranian sailors going up to a ship and taking a mine off of it,” he added.
This grainy video is what Cotton and other members of the war party are claiming that is the smoking gun proving Iran conducted the attacks:
President Trump has stated frequently that he does not want to start any more wars, but members of Congress and his administration will not be making that easy for him. They smell blood in the water, and Iran may be next on the hit list of the military-industrial complex.
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