I watched a three minute Fox News clip on YouTube. Thumbnail shows Donald and Melania Trump, Mike Pence, a man holding onto a leash, and a Belgian Malinois. I haven't seen President Trump by an animal before, nor have I seen him in a natural setting except in a clip showing him inspecting a burned part of California.
The military working dog, Conan, a member of Delta Force, was injured October 26 in the blast from Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi's suicide vest. Recovered, Conan was taken to the White House to meet two people who, from their body language, obviously don't give a shit about dogs. As President Trump talked outside to reporters, he praised the dog's courage, while sneaking in a Trumpian putdown, saying, "I said to his handler maybe Conan should be muzzled."
The dog responded well to Vice President Pence, who petted his head and scratched behind his ears. It's the only time I've ever seen Mike Pence behave like a human being. He demonstrated a liking for dogs, an ease in their company.
Melania Trump kept her distance, standing apart from the dog and the three men. Her presence in this display had something to do with a First Lady's duties celebrating human interest situations, I guess, although the hero dog took part in an illegal operation in Syria's Idlib Province. Anything done by U.S. ground troops in Syria, where they haven't been invited to operate (unlike Russian military forces), constitutes a violation of international law, but who cares? The U.S. is a major international state criminal with a permanent seat on the U.N. Security Council.
Trump's mention of a muzzle suggests his immediate below the surface fear of an attack dog clamping teeth into a billionaire's small hands. If the handler gave the command, would Conan rip out the Trumps' throats? Probably so. Conan, like most soldiers, follows orders.
The ISIS leader's suicide in this time of impeachment obsession didn't earn Trump kudos from pundits and other mainstream news personalities. An often shown photograph of Obama and his people watching "in real time" the alleged "raid" on Osama bin Laden's "compound" in Pakistan was displayed on cable news next to a picture of Trump at the head of a long table along with brass and advisers, watching "in real time" the hunting of al-Baghdadi. Trump remarked to the press, "It was like watching a movie." I guess so, in that they were looking at a screen with images moving on it.
Kathryn Bigelow's Zero Dark Thirty, an orthodox account of the Seal Team 6 "raid" on bin Laden's "compound" in Abbottabad depicts the official version debunked thoroughly by Seymour Hersh, who found that al-Qaeda's leader was captured just a few years after 9/11 by Pakistani forces, held prisoner in the "compound," and used as a bargaining chip with the U.S. A show raid, Pakistani authorities had removed soldiers guarding the place. When Seal Team 6 arrived, rappelling from helicopters they of course met no resistance, otherwise they would've been shot and shot at while vulnerable in mid-air. Nor did bin Laden put up a fight, as first reported. The Seal who executed him "canoed" his head on purpose. It's a fun killing technique requiring good aim whereby the shooter sends a bullet along the skull's top, making a blood- and brains-filled trench.
In Dick Cheney's "Long War," some Seals, deployed numerous times in war theaters, have gotten very good at their psychopathic hobbies. Trump, whose naked love for cruelty can't be realistically disputed (he's defunding the food stamp program but isn't getting impeached for that) has spoken in defense of a Seal who murdered a captured young ISIS fighter and then posed for a picture with the corpse. This representative of America's finest also enjoyed shooting people at random. Navy authorities wanting to prosecute this Seal have struggled with the case; they're running up against the will of a president who praises supposedly tough motherfuckers who actually engage in casually committed murder, funded by U.S. taxpayers, but then, that's the nature of the war Americans are sleeping through.
Whether or not the raid in Idlib Province is a pile of shit truth-wise, bear in mind our only sources for its sequence of events are the Trump administration and the U.S. military, both entities engaged in making illegal war in Syria, a war favored by Republicans and Democrats.
"In war, truth is the first casualty," a line attributed to Greek playwright and military veteran Aeschylus.
Spending a few minutes in the presence of a dog gave Trump a chance to further advertise his vanquishment of an ISIS leader, now replaced by another who may be destined to die in a fake raid. U.S. policy now and before, during Obama's eight years, favors ISIS and al-Qaeda at times, but in my way of looking at it, if you supply weapons to a terror group, it means you're on their side. Like al-Qaeda, ISIS is sometimes useful in the thinking of Pentagon and CIA geniuses who really don't give a shit about Congresswoman and Iraq War veteran Tulsi Gabbard's alarm that the United States funds terrorists.
Trump's report about his "anti-terror" "raid"--"like watching a movie"--hints perhaps at the fakery stage-managed by political leaders and mainstream news media propagandists, all of whom try to convince us, often successfully, that bad guys go down and our patriotic American will is ever strong. Even Obama engaged in this kind of deception when he "attacked" a feeble man held prisoner for years, someone offered by Pakistani authorities to be killed and dumped into the sea, just as al-Baghdadi's remains were swiftly disposed of.
If Conan the Belgian Malinois could tell us what really happened, would his account differ from the official version?
Vic Neptune
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