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Welcome to the official home and wonderful world of Pulitzer Prize Winning Political Cartoonist Michael P. Ramirez, daily editorial cartoonist for the Las Vegas Review Journal |
Michael Ramirez cartoon depicting Qasem Soleimani arriving at gates of Comic Con in Hell.
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The Devil welcomes Qasam Soleimani to hellish Comic Con
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Iran faces dilemma in avenging general's death: To strike back without starting a war
Sean D. Naylor, Jenna McLaughlin and Zach Dorfman , Yahoo News•January 3, 2020 WASHINGTON — Iran’s supreme leader, Ali Khamenei, vowed to exact “severe revenge” for the Thursday night U.S. airstrike that killed the country’s most famous general, but the Iranian regime will have to walk a fine line to respond strongly without provoking a war with the United States, former intelligence officials familiar with the region said Friday. Qassem Soleimani headed the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps’ Quds Force, which combines intelligence gathering, covert action and special operations. He died when a U.S. missile struck his vehicle near Baghdad International Airport. Also killed in the airstrike, which hit two vehicles, was Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis, the leader of the Iraqi Shiite militia group Kataib Hezbollah, along with several other Quds Force and militia members. Soleimani was a charismatic leader who for 20 years had played a key role in orchestrating Iran’s foreign policy in the Middle East, particularly with regard to its use of proxy militia forces such as Lebanese Hezbollah, numerous Iraqi Shiite armed groups and the Houthi militia in Yemen. He directed the killing of more than 600 U.S. troops during the Iraq War by Shiite militias using a particularly lethal sort of roadside bomb called an explosively formed penetrator. More recently, he commanded Iran’s military efforts to shore up its ally Bashar Assad in the Syrian war. “He was the most famous intel figure on the planet,” said Marc Polymeropoulos, a former senior CIA operations official. But that fame has now put the Iranian regime in a bind, according to Norman Roule, who was the national intelligence manager for Iran until 2017. Because of Soleimani’s iconic stature, it will have to be seen to strike back itself, rather than merely through proxies, he said. But Iran must do so with enough “implausible deniability” to avoid giving the United States an excuse to launch a war that could lead to the collapse of the Islamic Republic. Iran will also want to avoid antagonizing Europe, China or Russia in its response, Roule said. read more U.S. KILLS QASSEM SOLEIMANI Donald Trump cuts off Iran’s terror arm in Iraq, while Israel braces for Iranian retaliation By Tony Badran. January 3, 2020 • 2:25 AM. TABLET MAGAZINE America ‘Cannot Do a Damn Thing,’ Eh?Editorial of The New York Sun | January 3, 2020
‘At the direction of the President, the U.S. military has taken decisive defensive action to protect U.S. personnel abroad by killing Qasem Soleimani’ By RICH LOWRY. January 2, 2020 10:50 PM THE CORNER
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Inside the plot by Iran’s Soleimani to attack U.S. forces in Iraq
Reuters staff. January 3, 2020 (Reuters) - In mid-October, Iranian Major-General Qassem Soleimani met with his Iraqi Shi’ite militia allies at a villa on the banks of the Tigris River, looking across at the U.S. embassy complex in Baghdad. The Revolutionary Guards commander instructed his top ally in Iraq, Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis, and other powerful militia leaders to step up attacks on U.S. targets in the country using sophisticated new weapons provided by Iran, two militia commanders and two security sources briefed on the gathering told Reuters. The strategy session, which has not been previously reported, came as mass protests against Iran’s growing influence in Iraq were gaining momentum, putting the Islamic Republic in an unwelcome spotlight. Soleimani’s plans to attack U.S. forces aimed to provoke a military response that would redirect that rising anger toward the United States, according to the sources briefed on the gathering, Iraqi Shi’ite politicians and government officials close to Iraqi Prime Minister Adel Abdul Mahdi. Soleimani’s efforts ended up provoking the U.S. attack on Friday that killed him and Muhandis, marking a major escalation of tensions between the United States and Iran. The two men died in air strikes on their convoy at a Baghdad airport as they headed to the capital, dealing a major blow to the Islamic Republic and the Iraqi paramilitary groups it supports. Interviews with the Iraqi security sources and Shi’ite militia commanders offer a rare glimpse of how Soleimani operated in Iraq, which he once told a Reuters reporter he knew like the back of his hand. Two weeks before the October meeting, Soleimani ordered Iranian Revolutionary Guards to move more sophisticated weapons - such as Katyusha rockets and shoulder-fired missiles that could bring down helicopters - to Iraq through two border crossings, the militia commanders and Iraqi security sources told Reuters. At the Baghdad villa, Soleimani told the assembled commanders to form a new militia group of low-profile paramilitaries - unknown to the United States - who could carry out rocket attacks on Americans housed at Iraqi military bases. He ordered Kataib Hezbollah - a force founded by Muhandis and trained in Iran - to direct the new plan, said the militia sources briefed on the meetings. Soleimani told them such a group “would be difficult to detect by the Americans,” one of the militia sources told Reuters. read more Soleimani’s IEDs killed more than 600 American soldiers, wounded many more
January 5, 2020. MY STATELINE (WRBL) — Many people heard the name Qasem Soleimani for the first time last week when the Iranian general was killed by U.S. forces. Soldiers who have come through Fort Benning have known Soleimani’s name for nearly two decades. And they have known of his evil deeds in the Middle East. Soleimani was the man behind a more deadly Improvised Explosive Devices that ran up the American casualty count beginning in 2003. There are 6,989 names on the wall of the Global War on Terror Memorial at the National Infantry Museum. Soleimani’s work is responsible for more than 600 of those deaths, according to a 2018 U.S. Department of Defense study. Another 1,600 soldiers who were maimed or injured from the devices. Peter L. Jones was there in 2003-04. Back again in 2007-08. And in 2009-10, he was a brigade commander in the Third Infantry Division. When asked if Soleimani was a bad guy, Jones didn’t pause. “Well, yes. You can’t say that he did not have American blood on his hands,” Jones said. “And his goal was to keep American influence out of the Middle East and make sure those countries turned toward Tehran versus Washington.” The Global War on Terror Memorial is the only place in the nation where the names of all of the men and women who died since 9-11 can be found in one place. Soleimani was a high-value target, Jones said. “When you understand who’s responsible for that threat to your soldiers, you have mixed emotions. But he was a legitimate target,” Jones said. “The head of a terrorist organization, that was going to continue to spread malign influence throughout the region and was going to continue to be a threat." read more
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