Tell Me Who Your Friends Are...

And if Mike Pompeo, allegedly a top US "diplomat", is in your administration--that pretty much sums up who you are. Make no mistake, currently, the United States has zero diplomats of scale and skill required to handle a clusterfuck which US foreign policy is, but Mike Pompeo is something special--a devout Ruprutist, an Israeli-firster and, in general, is an Exhibit A of a collection of different delusions and disorders preventing such ilk from having any relation with the reality. He is also a BSer of a note when trying to state that: 

Mike Pompeo claims strike killing Iranian general was a 'collective decision' despite report saying leaders were 'stunned' by Trump's choice

Evidently this is not quite "true". I, of course, am not talking about the "the buck stops with me" guy in the White House who simultaneously declared war on Iran (and now on Iraq); in the end he is ultimately responsible for being unfit to run this country (but who is?) and making disastrous decisions. If to believe WaPo (I know, I know) it was US Secretary of the State who for months was pushing for assassination of Soleimani (the article at WaPo is behind the paywall), including feverish, several times a day, sessions with DJT precisely on this issue. Well, he, certainly, succeeded. Now he, together with Trump, are both personally responsible for what follows because Iran will respond. Some moves are already in progress, with Chief of the Iranian General Staff already having consultations with Shoigu (in Russian). Obviously, officially those consultations are defined as aimed "to not allow further escalation", which in military lingo means a review of options. Meanwhile, Pompeo makes rounds trying to convince everyone that assassination of a very senior government official of the sovereign nation was "necessary". As I say, yet again, he lied, some Americans already died. 

Evidently Pentagon knew what kind of shit Trump was getting United States into and what that meant for US bases in the Middle East. Larry C Johnson was straight to the point: 

                                              There Will Be Blood

Too bad (for Pentagon) that Trump went for the most insane option. But, I guess, against the background of a precipitous intellectual decline of US political elites and dual loyalties (primarily to Israel and Saudi money) being a normal fact of US body politic expecting sound geopolitical decisions based on expertise is not a possibility anymore. And so, here we are. I may gather enough will and strength to review some military options but, frankly, it is a fool's errand since pretty much everyone is going to be writing about it. One such piece, well intended, but wrongly justified has already been written by former Marine helicopter pilot in which this was stated:

An admiral in the UK states that an invasion of Iran would require millions of American troops, akin to the occupation of Germany after World War II. But he’s off the mark: things have come a long way since 1945. In World War II, when we wanted to cripple a German ball bearing plant at Schweinfurt, we had to send 291 B-17 bombers, 77 of which never came home. This scale was due to the inaccuracy of the dumb bombs being used. Today, we have GPS and laser-guided bombs that can reliably land within a few meters of their targets. The accuracy of every weapon system, from tanks to planes to artillery, has jumped by many orders of magnitude, thus requiring fewer personnel and delivery systems to achieve the same destructive results. Iraq was defeated with about 225,000 coalition troops in 2003. Millions of soldiers would not be required to invade Iran.

You know by now my attitude to all those historical parallels, especially when drawn inaccurately. The author, obviously, forgot that Iran, unlike Iraq in 2003, does have modern EW systems, including ones capable of jamming GPS signal and Iran's army herself has enough of those very same laser-guided munitions which, considering Iran's nightmarish terrain, will make any armor warfare a living hell for any invader. Same goes for infantry. So, I wouldn't dismiss assessments by Royal Navy's Admiral when he states that the United States will need a number of troops around million or so if the United States wants to "occupy" Iran. And here is a conundrum for the US--once the real escalation starts, the US will NEED to win the war for which it doesn't have resources. Both Trump and Pompeo bear direct responsibility for putting the United States into this strategic trap which, as Phil Giraldi termed it is:

The Soleimani Assassination. The Long-Awaited Beginning of The End of America’s Imperial Ambitions

Difficult to disagree.In the end, Trump chose his cabinet and as the saying goes, tell me who your friends are....