What should have come up, did not — in 60 Minutes' account of last year's Iranian missile attack on US-occupied Al Asad Airbase

01 March 2021

60 Minutes dodged important issues . . .

. . . in last night's report entitled:

60 Minutes, Never-before-seen video of the attack on Al Asad Airbase, YouTube (28 February 2021)

The report recounted US troops' perspective . . .

. . . regarding an Iranian-launched ballistic missile strike that hit Al Asad Airbase — after the US had assassinated Iranian General Qasem Soleimani on 03 January 2020.

The Iranian retaliatory missile strike took place on 08 January 2020:

On 8 January 2020, in a military operation code named Operation Martyr Soleimani . . . . Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps . . . launched numerous ballistic missiles at the Ayn al-Asad airbase . . . as well as another airbase in Erbil, in the Kurdistan Region, in response to the killing of Major General Qasem Soleimani by a United States drone strike.

While the U.S. initially assessed that none of its service members were injured or killed, the U.S. Department of Defense ultimately said that 110 service members had been diagnosed and treated for traumatic brain injuries from the attack, however none died due to early warning provided by the United States Space Force.

Some analysts suggested the strike was deliberately designed to avoid causing any fatalities in order to dissuade an armed American response.

However, United States Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said the attack was intended to kill.

Among the participants interviewed by 60 Minutes' David Martin . . .

. . . was pugnacious US Central Command commander, Marine Corps General Frank McKenzie Jr:

Martin: This was an attack like no other.

McKenzie: It was an attack, certainly, like nothing I've ever experienced.

Martin: What have you learned, so far?

McKenzie: Their missiles were accurate.

Martin: Did that surprise you?

McKenzie: We knew it. But to see it — [the rest of sentence evidently left hanging or subsequently edited out].

They fired those missiles to significant range. And they hit pretty much where they wanted to hit.

Directly pertinent to Iran's missile attack is . . .

. . . the fact that it was McKenzie, who had supervised the illegal and strategically stupid (unless war is the eventual goal) drone execution of General Soleimani.

McKenzie's justification for that assassination was that Soleimani had been responsible for killing about 600 Americans in the past. And the Iranian general was, allegedly, imminently planning to dispose of some more, forthwith.

Both acts, McKenzie implied, could not be tolerated.

How McKenzie purportedly knew all this is — given that it would have been a closely guarded Iranian secret — unrevealed.

McKenzie also told 60 Minutes that he that knew Iran would retaliate after the assassination. The only questions were where and how.

Let's run with the 'where' and 'how'

The sprint will take us someplace illuminating.

Was it Iran's intent to kill or to warn?

The distinction matters, at least ethically speaking, given the continual press for fomenting war with Iran from both the Trump and Biden administrations.

The 60 Minutes video shows abbreviated air footage of the incoming Iranian medium range ballistic missiles. Notice that the missiles shown (in the air view) are landing at the perimeter of the Airbase.

Thus, former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo's description of Iran's killing intent might have been an intentional distortion of fact.

On the other hand, General McKenzie told 60 Minutes' David Martin that he had directed an intentionally last-minute evacuation — of non-essential personnel — from the Airbase, after he received intelligence regarding Iran's soon-to-be initiated ballistic attack.

General McKenzie said that he had delayed Airbase evacuation, so that Iran could not redirect its missiles to compensate for it. See the 60 Minutes video at 10:50 minutes and on.

McKenzie estimated that, in the absence of such an evacuation, 100 to 150 US military personnel might have been killed.

How McKenzie would know this, beats me. And probably anyone else with experience in Life and Death's unpredictable happenings. Especially so, after McKenzie had already admitted that he has no experience with ballistic missile attacks. Nor could he have known exactly where all the Al Asad base troops were, when the missiles began landing. McKenzie himself was, reportedly, in Tampa, Florida.

McKenzie's combative drift is further revealed in his implication that Iran had wanted to kill a bunch of Americans — but failed.

"We had a plan to retaliate, if Americans had died," he told David Martin.

With McKenzie's retaliatory statement in mind

Let's backtrack a bit, to before the Iranian missiles landed.

Were American leaders trying to get some of our own troops killed — as justification to paste Iran and start the war that American neocons and Israel want?

Consider the following.

Defensive preparations at Al Asad were, we can infer from the interviews . . .

. . . minimal and arguably sloppy.

Airbase troops told 60 Minutes that Al Asad does have air raid bunkers. But those were built during the Saddam Hussein regime, during the Iran-Iraq war.

Furthermore, we are also told — by troops trying to crowd into those bunkers at the time of the Iranian missile attack — that the shelters are too small and too few — to efficiently and swiftly accommodate all of the base's US personnel. Even, apparently, under conditions of the just-completed evacuation.

Now, think about this

The US knew that Iran has accurate missiles with noticeably powerful warheads. But we illegally assassinated an Iranian leader anyway.

Then, when the missiles (that we already knew about) flew in — we were surprised that they were exactly as capable as they were supposed to be.

Direct bomb experience is, apparently, required for belief in rockheaded — read jarhead in the immediate context — American military circles.

And — even knowing all of this beforehand — we left a major American base without modern, American-built bunkers — that presumably would have been dispersed in sufficient numbers, accessibility and locations — to adequately protect our troops.

We depended, instead, upon a third-world power's forty year old (or so), obviously inadequate relics.

And post-evacuation, we still had (apparently) too many troops left at the base to efficiently and quickly fit into the comparatively ancient bunkers that Saddam had inadvertently provided us with.

Do you see why I wonder whether . . .

. . . 'accidently' offing some of our own people was part of American neocons' — Execute Soleimani, Missiles Be Damned — plan?

Is this really the kind of warmongering, provocation-delivering and poor planning-ahead leadership that Americans want for their Armed Services sons and daughters?

Combatant command recklessness seems to be the American norm.

Consider the intersection of ethics and intelligent geopolitical strategizing

According to General McKenzie, former President Trump — and (apparently) current President Biden— we get to (illegally and extraordinarily provocatively) kill General Soleimani.

But Iranians don't get to kill even one American troop (of any rank) in payback.

The logic is questionable. Whether in law, ethics, or Sun Tzu-like strategic thinking. Unless, of course, Americans can make it stick, without suffering any negative consequences.

The latter possibility (of skating happily free of strategic negatives) is not out of the question. But it probably overlooks the price that one pays for visibly being an out-of-control Adam Henry — whom more and more nations will want to weaken and bring down.

Never underestimate the power of small guys to gang up and eventually strip Nasty Big Guy's balls off. (To indulge a graphic, but historically accurate metaphor.)

Empires have a way of disintegrating themselves, just by irritating so many of the people that they subjugate.

Take into evidence, the comparatively recently formed alliance between the Russian Federation and the People's Republic of China.

Only American strategy imbeciles — of unequalled in-the-chamber-pot talent — could have pulled that one off. Nevertheless, we did.

This state of unprepared strategic affairs is typically American

We know what 'them guys' can do. But after provoking our self-proclaimed adversaries, we don't actually prepare to counter whatever they come up with. That, by the way, is why we've been in Afghanistan for more than 19 years.

It is, for our military leaders, way more fun to spend (an anticipated 1.727 trillion dollars) on (failed) F-35 fighter jets — and other toys — that do not work, or which we do not need.

After all, where's the fun in building boring bunkers — in preparation for events that we will, according to our characteristic patterns of behavior, absolutely force into taking place?

Notice something else about 60 Minutes' report

Literally everyone interviewed in it expressed surprise at how violently explosives explode.

Evidently, it is okay for the US to explode other people. Especially 'brown' foreign people.

But it is not okay for US people — who are occupying those brown foreign countries — that we have invaded, occupied or massively infiltrated — to be targeted by the Home Folk's flesh-rending weapons.

Surprise, surprise.

Who would'a thought that 'those' guys might have the courage and cleverness to retaliate against us?

This (of course) is why Iran sent us its missile-delivered reminder

Iran, very probably, was trying not to kill Americans.

It was just waking Top Dog guys — like Central Command's McKenzie — into recognizing that Iran will not become yet another patsy for American Imperialism's dismemberment.

In that cleverer-than-we-thought vein, I am pretty darn sure that Iran probably secreted its own people, or Iraqi sympathizers, in the desert around Al Asad Airbase to see what was going on — before Iran launched its missiles.

General McKenzie's last-minute evacuation of the Airbase probably did not surprise anyone.

Remember whose region this part of the world actually is:

Do we think — for example — that Coloradans, who are defending themselves from potential attacks to be delivered from an enemy in neighboring Nebraska, would not infiltrate reliable sources into pertinent areas inside the Cornhusker state?

This (very probable) Iranian intelligence-gathering means that the following is also likely true:

Iranians could not have targeted a large and reasonably well-populated area — like Al Asad Airbase — with their reportedly competently aimed missiles and powerful explosives — and then accidently defied statistical probability by not killing anyone.

Unless, of course, they did exactly that — skillfully and on purpose.

In my tentative view, the message that Iran intended to send was about its technological capability. Not about killing Americans.

I would, accordingly, also not be surprised if Iran had let Iraqi authorities know what was going to happen, just so that the Iraqis would tell the American command structure.

McKenzie got his pre-attack information from somewhere. And the CIA's self-originated record in similar regards is not notably stellar.

Israel also probably knew about the Iranian plan. But Israel would have kept its mouth shut because it vigorously wants the US to go to war with Iran. Dead American troops would have been welcome thing.

Wheels within wheels.

In short, the preponderance of publicly available information leads one to think that the Iranian missile retaliation, which was directed at a military target so as to make a proud point, was a warning intended to be a heads up — aimed at arrogantly ignorant American commanders and politicians — rather than a death-to-Americans blow.

A related US cultural point

This one regards our unimaginative, unempathic American psyche.

Completely lost in 60 Minutes' coverage was the fact that the US blows up 'brown' people — almost every day — on purpose. Those who do survive, suffer far more serious injuries, than 60 Minutes' interviewed US military folk did.

In spite of those realities, not one of the American troops interviewed (for understandable chain of command reasons) — nor 60 Minutes interviewer David Martin — made that point. Evidently, in USA Logic, big bombs harm only Americans.

'Them' foreigners — meaning the ones that we blow up on daily purpose and by collateral accident — do not, according to us, count among the world's Quotient of Sad Woe.

Essentially clueless, strategy wise

No one during the 60 Minutes interviews made a strategic connection between:

(a) what we do to brownish foreign folks every day

and

(b) American troops' own unpleasant experiences during the Iranian missile attack.

American occupations reflexively indulge thoughtlessly dispensed murder and mayhem, without properly assessing the practical and moral consequences of doing so.

We are still in Afghanistan, for instance. Accomplishing nothing of strategic value. And just pissing off patriotic Afghans and Islamist-centered folk.

A better formula for fomenting never-ending war would be hard to design.

The moral? — An accurate sense of causation is absent from American strategic thinking

The world's top terror-dispensing nation does not acknowledge the suffering of those it kills and maims. Ever.

However, we do (metaphorically) whine self-righteously — when someone has the gall to strike back, even without killing any of us.

It is challenging to imagine a more morally contemptible display of lost situational perspective and strategic proportion.

What, for instance, do we think is going to happen — when the United States foments a 'real' war with Russia and/or China?

Pertinent to that question, which of the world's major militaries has — by orders of magnitude — the most historical experience with genuine existential conflict?

Yes, Russia's.

As a result of Russian leadership's existential relationship to war — we will (almost certainly) not find Russians talking about survivable traumatic brain injuries, sustained from missile attacks that they foolishly invited upon themselves.

In conclusion — and from Sun Tzu's supposedly wise perspective — it is all a question of legitimate strategic perspective and actual (not imagined) history. American leaders and public do poorly on both those counts.

The only Americans — who profit from these errors of mind and interpersonal perspective — are US four stars and the US military-business complex that produces the weapons and accoutrements that are necessary to fueling perpetual war.

Look behind propaganda. Follow money, ego and self-advancement. Morality, justice, soul and legitimate honor are not there. Neither is genuine national defense.

PeteFree.com

What should have come up, did not — in 60 Minutes' account of last year's Iranian missile attack on US-occupied Al Asad Airbase