Chris Hedges's Blog, page 61

Let’s Stop Pretending Joe Biden Is the Most Electable Democrat

Over the past year, former Vice President Joe Biden’s presidential campaign has been consistently elevated by the electability narrative. Meanwhile, Sen. Bernie Sanders, currently polling in second, has been repeatedly written off by the mainstream media as unelectable. “Electability” has been the most frequently made argument in favor of nominating Biden over his competitors, and it has probably been the biggest booster — apart from the Obama aura — keeping his exhausted presidential campaign alive.

With so many Democrats emotionally scarred by 2016 and terrified that Trump will win again next year, there has been a growing susceptibility to conservative and centrist narratives about the American electorate. Research has shown that fear and anxiety can drive people to become more conservative, and for many emotionally distraught (and older) liberals, the election of Trump seems to have done just that. According to the electability narrative, American voters are overwhelmingly moderate and don’t trust any candidates who seem to lean too far to the left or the right. This makes Biden, the centrist who is worried about Democrats gaining too much power, the perfect candidate for the electability crowd. To them, he is the safe and prudent choice, unlike Sanders or Sen. Elizabeth Warren, who are both too radical for America in 2020.

The electability argument should have died in 2016 after the most unelectable candidate in history defeated one of the most supposedly electable, but here we are. More than three years after Trump shocked the commentariat with his victory, the pundit class is as determined as ever to employ the same old tropes and clichés that led to disaster in 2016. The entire concept of electability is, as Matt Taibbi puts it in his recent book, “Hate, Inc: Why Today’s Media Makes Us Despise One Another,” conventional wisdom in search of scientific recognition” — and in 2016, the data was unambiguous. Trump should never have won the election, according to the polls. He was a walking case study for unelectability and seemed to do the very opposite of everything that presidential candidates were supposed to do, according to conventional wisdom.

While Trump appeared to shatter all of the assumptions that political journalists and pundits have long made about electoral politics, many seem to have since concluded that the president is an anomalous freak of nature and that all of their previous beliefs still hold true. For many of the leading exponents of conventional wisdom, the recent election in the United Kingdom, which saw Jeremy Corbyn’s Labour Party lose badly to Boris Johnson’s Tories, was a confirmation of this. Centrists in the Democratic Party seized the UK election as a cautionary tale for the Democrats not to move to the left as Labour did. “Look what happens when the Labour Party moves so, so far to the left,” declared Biden shortly after the election.

The comparison is lazy and simplistic, and it betrays an ignorance of British politics. Most important, the central issue for the 2019 UK election was irrelevant to American politics, and had nothing to do with left- or right-wing ideology. This election was fundamentally about Brexit, which left Labour badly divided. Corbyn was perceived as an uncharismatic and personally unpopular leader who failed to take a clear position on Brexit, which ultimately doomed Labour despite the party’s extremely popular policies.

One of the clearest parallels between the UK and the U.S. is the media and its flagrant bias against left-wing candidates, or what some have recently come to call “centrist bias.” From the very start of Jeremy Corbyn’s rise four years ago, the press unfairly maligned and smeared the candidate. A study from the London School of Economics and Political Science, which scrutinized articles from the major British newspapers, found that Corbyn was “thoroughly delegitimised as a political actor from the moment he became a prominent candidate and even more so after he was elected as party leader,” through “lack of or distortion of voice,” “ridicule, scorn and personal attacks,” and through “association, mainly with terrorism.” This grew even worse after he became leader of the Labour Party, and for several years now Corbyn has been endlessly vilified and misrepresented by the British press. A 2016 analysis of BBC’s coverage of Corbyn concluded that critics were given about twice the amount of airtime as supporters on BBC News at Six, and “pejorative language” was used by BBC reporters to describe Corbyn, his team and his supporters. It only grew worse over the next two years, and a recent audit of the media coverage during the 2019 general election by Loughborough University posited that there was twice as much hostile coverage in the top British newspapers as there was in 2017.

It’s no secret that the American press isn’t a fan of Bernie Sanders either, although he has been largely immune to negative coverage, and is far more personally popular than Corbyn ever was in the UK. Since his 2016 campaign he has been consistently written off as too radical, too old, too divisive — and therefore completely unelectable. So far, coverage of his 2020 campaign has been largely a repeat of 2016. A recent analysis of MSNBC’s coverage during the months of August and September of Sanders and the two other leading candidates, Sen. Elizabeth Warren and Joe Biden, found that Sanders received the least amount of coverage — less than one-third of Biden’s; by comparison, Warren received about half the coverage that Biden got) — and also the most negative. Though Sanders has consistently ranked as a top candidate since the primaries began, those in the press have done their best to ignore or diminish him, propping up numerous candidates who have since dropped out or fallen in the polls.

After all that, Sanders is still standing. He has become impossible to ignore, and as Jeet Heer recently observed in the Nation, the “Bernie Blackout” seems to be over. The mainstream media now recognizes that Sanders isn’t going anywhere and has a real shot at winning the nomination. Now, Heer argues, the “most important barrier [for Sanders] is the concern Democratic primary voters have over electability.”

There is little doubt that the media will continue to paint Sanders as utterly unelectable. This will happen despite the fact that the Vermont senator seems to be the best positioned to win in the battleground states that Trump won in 2016; as a recent analysis in Jacobin points out, Sanders has out-fundraised all of his opponents in the counties that flipped from Obama in 2008 and 2012 to Trump in 2016. The best argument against the electability conceit takes the form of the man currently sitting in the White House. “Centrist bias” is essentially a bias towards conventional wisdom, and over the past five years Donald Trump has consistently proven conventional wisdom wrong. If Democrats yield to the pressure of conventional wisdom once again and nominate the candidate who is electable only on paper, Trump may prove all the experts wrong yet again.

 

Trump Fulfills the Wishes of Israel’s Mossad

Last October Yossi Cohen, head of Israel’s Mossad, spoke openly about assassinating Iranian general Qassem Soleimani, the head of the elite Quds Force in Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps.

“He knows very well that his assassination is not impossible,” Cohen said in an interview. Soleimani had boasted that Israel tried to assassinate him in 2006 and failed.

“With all due respect to his bluster,” Cohen said, “he hasn’t necessarily committed the mistake yet that would place him on the prestigious list of Mossad’s assassination targets.”

“Is Israel Targeting Iran’s Top General for Assassination?” I asked last October. On January 3, Soleimani was killed in an air strike ordered by President Trump.

Soleimani’s convoy was struck by U.S. missiles as he left a meeting at Baghdad’s airport amid anti-Iranian and anti-American demonstrations in Iraq. Supporters of an Iranian-backed militia had agreed to withdraw from the U.S. diplomatic compound in return for a promise that the government would allow a parliamentary vote on expelling 5,000 U.S. troops from Iraq.

The Pentagon issued a statement confirming the military operation, which came “at the direction of the president” and was “aimed at deterring future Iranian attack plans.” The Pentagon claimed that Gen. Soleimani was “actively developing plans to attack American diplomats and service members in Iraq and throughout the region.”

Israeli Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu, under indictment for criminal charges, was the first and only national leader to support Trump’s action, while claiming that Trump acted entirely on his own.

“Just as Israel has the right to self-defense, the United States has exactly the same right,” Netanyahu told reporters in Greece. “Qassem Soleimani is responsible for the deaths of American citizens and other innocents, and he was planning more attacks.”

Iranian President Hassan Rouhani vowed retaliation for the general’s death, tweeting that “Iran will take revenge for this heinous crime.”

Capable Foe

Soleimani was the most capable foe of the United States and Israel in the region. As chief of the Quds Force, Soleimani was a master of Iran’s asymmetric warfare strategy, using proxy forces to bleed Iran’s enemies, while preserving the government’s ability to plausibly deny involvement.

After the U.S. invasions of Iraq, he funded and trained anti-American militias that launched low-level attacks on U.S. occupation forces, killing hundreds of U.S. servicemen and generating pressure for U.S. withdrawal.

In recent years, Soleimani led two successful Iranian military operations: the campaign to drive ISIS out of western Iraq in 2015 and the campaign to crush the jihadist forces opposed to Syria’s Bashar al-Assad. The United States and Israel denounced Iran’s role in both operations but could not prevent Iran from claiming victory.

Soleimani had assumed a leading role in Iraqi politics in the past year. The anti-ISIS campaign relied on Iraqi militias, which the Iranians supported with money, weapons, and training. After ISIS was defeated, these militias maintained a prominent role in Iraq that many resented, leading to demonstrations and rioting. Soleimani was seeking to stabilize the government and channel the protests against the United States when he was killed.

In the same period, Israel pursued its program of targeted assassination. In an effort to thwart Iran’s nuclear program, Mossad assassinated at least five Iranian nuclear scientists, according to Israeli journalist Ronen Bergman. Yossi Melman, another Israeli journalist, says that Mossad has assassinated 60-70 enemies outside of its borders since its founding in 1947, though none as prominent as Soleimani.

Israel also began striking at the Iranian-backed militias in Iraq last year. The United States did the same on December 29, killing 19 fighters and prompting anti-American demonstrations as big as the anti-Iranian demonstrations of a month ago.

Now the killing of Soleimani promises more unrest, if not open war. The idea that it will deter Iranian attacks may come to rank with George Bush’s “Mission Accomplished” in the annals of American folly.

“This doesn’t mean war,” wrote former Defense Department official Andrew Exum, “it will not lead to war, and it doesn’t risk war. None of that. It is war.”

The Kuwaiti newspaper Al-Jarida reported two years ago that Washington had given Israel the green light to assassinate Soleimani, as Haaretz recounted:

“Al-Jarida, which in recent years… [has] broken exclusive stories from Israel, quoted a source in Jerusalem as saying that ‘there is an American-Israeli agreement’ that Soleimani is a ‘threat to the two countries’ interests in the region.’ It is generally assumed in the Arab world that the paper is used as an Israeli platform for conveying messages to other countries in the Middle East.”

Trump has now fulfilled the wishes of Mossad. After proclaiming his intention to end America’s “stupid endless wars,” the president has effectively declared war on the largest country in the region in solidarity with Israel, the most unpopular country in the Middle East.

This article was produced by the Deep State, a project of the Independent Media Institute.

Jefferson Morley is a writing fellow and the editor and chief correspondent of the Deep State, a project of the Independent Media Institute. He has been a reporter and editor in Washington, D.C., since 1980. He spent 15 years as an editor and reporter at the Washington Post. He was a staff writer at Arms Control Today and Washington editor of Salon. He is the editor and co-founder of JFK Facts, a blog about the assassination of JFK. His latest book is The Ghost: The Secret Life of CIA Spymaster, James Jesus Angleton.

Bolton Willing to Testify in Trump Impeachment Trial if Subpoenaed

WASHINGTON — Former White House national security adviser John Bolton said Monday that he is “prepared to testify” if he is subpoenaed by the Senate in its impeachment trial of President Donald Trump, a surprise statement that bolstered Democrats in their push for new witnesses.

Bolton, who left the White House in September, said that he has weighed the issues of executive privilege and that after “careful consideration and study” decided that he would comply with any Senate subpoena.

“If the Senate issues a subpoena for my testimony, I am prepared to testify,” he said in a statement.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell has publicly expressed resistance to calling new witnesses in the upcoming trial, though Democrats are pressing to hear from Bolton and others who did not appear before the House in its impeachment inquiry.

It’s unclear whether Bolton’s testimony would hurt or help the president. The two clashed while he was in the White House and offered differing versions of whether he resigned or was fired when he left office in September.

If Bolton were to appear, his testimony would give Congress and the public a highly anticipated, first-hand account from a Trump senior adviser who was present for key moments that have been described by others.

He’d almost certainly be asked, for instance, about a comment he was reported to have made to another White House adviser that he did not want to be “part of whatever drug deal” European Union ambassador Gordon Sondland and White House chief of staff Mick Mulvaney were “cooking up” as Trump pressured Ukraine to investigate Democrats.

That pressure, as Trump was withholding security aid to Ukraine, was at the heart of the inquiry in the House, which voted to impeach Trump on Dec. 18.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi is stalling the transmission of House-passed articles of impeachment against Trump in a bid for witness testimony. Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer has proposed calling several witnesses, including Bolton and Mulvaney, but McConnell has so far rejected Schumer’s terms.

It is uncertain when Pelosi will eventually send the articles to the Senate. If she decides to do so in the coming days, a trial could start as soon as this week.

“We can’t hold a trial without the articles,” McConnell tweeted Monday. “The Senate’s own rules don’t provide for that. So, for now, we are content to continue the ordinary business of the Senate while House Democrats continue to flounder. For now.”

Bolton’s willingness to testify averts a potential legal standoff over whether close aides to the president can be forced to appear before Congress. Trump and his lawyers have claimed that those aides should not have to testify, arguing that they have special immunity, or executive privilege, not to.

The issue remains undecided in the courts now that a federal judge dismissed last week a lawsuit from Bolton’s former deputy, Charles Kupperman, who had asked the court whether he had to comply with a House subpoena or follow a White House orders that he not testify. U.S. District Judge Richard Leon dismissed the case as moot, noting that the House had withdrawn its subpoena for Kupperman and had said that it didn’t plan to reissue one.

The case had been closely watched for the repercussions it carried for Bolton’s testimony.

The Associated Press reported in November that Bolton is writing a book and has a deal with the publisher Simon & Schuster, according to three publishing officials with knowledge of the situation. Two said the deal was worth $2 million. They spoke on condition of anonymity because they weren’t authorized to speak publicly.

Trump tweeted Monday morning that the impeachment “hoax” must “end quickly.”

“It is a con game by the Dems to help with the Election!,” Trump tweeted.

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Associated Press Writer Hillel Italie contributed to this report from New York.

The Progressive’s Guide to Corporate Democrat Speak

“Purity test”? “Pragmatic progressive”? “Free stuff”? What are these politicians talking about?

If you’re confused, you’re not alone. Certain words and phrases are routinely used by “centrist” political candidates. By design, these terms are imprecise, emotionally charged, and often self-contradicting. In fact, the word “centrist” is just such a term, since polling shows that the economic viewpoint of these candidates—especially regarding health care, Social Security, education and other social programs—is often well to the right of the general public.

Pete Buttigieg’s recent use of the term “purity test” is a case in point. While the Midwestern mayor used it to describe criticism of big-donor fundraising, it has also been applied to policies such as Medicare for All and the Green New Deal. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez fired back a few days later. “For anyone who accuses us for instituting purity tests,” she said, “it’s called having values. It’s called giving a damn.”

Presumably, every Democratic primary voter has some core values that any candidate must at least nominally endorse to get their support. What makes one position a “value” and another a “purity test”? Given the confusion caused by this and other terms, and as an aid to the general public, here’s a guide to centrist terminology.

The Centrist’s Dictionary

“Centrist”

Someone who presents a corporate-friendly agenda with less fervor than the typical Republican, with a modest measure of regulation as demanded by circumstances and with a patina of social liberalism.

“Choice” (when applied to a public good)

A word used as an attempt to distract people from the flawed state of the American social contract by forcing them to choose from an array of semi-functional, overpriced private-sector products. This allows policymakers to subsidize private corporations at public expense, while at the same time providing the public with something that loosely resembles—but is not—a functioning social safety net.

“Compete” (as in, “prepare workers of the future to compete”)

A word used to describe what workers will be required to do to survive in the new, Randian economy. For example, to become competitive, workers are sometimes expected to run through a gauntlet of poorly conceived and insufficiently funded educational programs to re-train them for the “new economy” (defined below), often under the assumption that there is a secret app designer hiding inside every laid-off manufacturing employee. To “compete” after training, workers should be prepared to fight like crabs in a barrel for low-paying jobs that provide no employment security or benefits. (See also: “Jobs of the future,” defined below.)

“Free stuff”

A term of contemptuous dismissal for public services that are commonly available in other developed countries, and which any decent society would make available to all human beings.

“Friend of mine” (as in, “John McCain was a friend of mine”)

A declaration of sentimental attachment not only to an individual across the aisle, but also to a long-passed era of comity between powerful individuals from both political parties. The term reflects an unwillingness to accept the cynicism and depravity of today’s GOP. It may also indicate a willingness to use “bipartisanship” as a cover for offering conservative policies by pretending they are needed to attract Republican votes (which they will not do).

“Health care consumers”

People who are forced to choose from a bewildering array of inadequate private health options, based on future needs they can’t anticipate, as offered by private corporations that benefit financially by confusing them now and denying them medical care later. The word “consumers” allows policymakers to accuse individuals of not being “smart shoppers” when things go wrong, thereby deflecting blame away from both themselves and the corporations.

“I don’t think anyone has a monopoly on bold ideas”

I don’t have any bold ideas.

“I know how to get things done”

I intend to keep using a political approach that hasn’t gotten anything done for years.

“I will not raise taxes one penny on the middle class”

I’ll let corporations keep ripping the nearly-vanished “middle class” off instead, charging people more than they’d pay in taxes while providing less in services—and without public oversight or accountability.

“I’m pragmatic”

I don’t believe that a country that won two world wars, rebuilt its economy with the New Deal after the Great Depression, created Medicare and Social Security, developed the internet at public expense, and sent several manned missions to the moon can do big things.

“Ideology” (as in, “I don’t believe in rigid adherence to any political ideology”)

A pejorative term for principles and/or core values.

“Jobs of the future”

Menial piecework tasks, parceled out through apps that force workers into 12-hour days in the hopes they can eke out a living through a lifetime of endless servility.

“Managed competition”

Managed confusion. (See “Choice,” above.)

“New economy”

Same as the old economy (circa 19th century), but the boss wears a turtleneck or a hoodie.

“Our country needs to balance its budget like a family sitting around the kitchen table”

Definition 1: I don’t understand how finance works.

Definition 2: I don’t want you to understand how finance works.

“Pipe dream”

Any bold idea I don’t support.

“Privatization”

Theft of public resources.

“Public/private partnership”

See above; the exploitation of public resources for private profit.

“Purity test”

Any belief or policy I won’t espouse because it would alienate my funders, but that I won’t openly oppose because it’s popular with voters. It implies that people who support it are rigid and unreasonable, rather than principled and thoughtful.

“Reaching across the aisle”

A coded message to big-money donors that you will not fight for the policies you claim to believe in.

“Realistic” (as in, “Your proposal (backed by a large majority of voters) isn’t realistic”)

We don’t live in a functioning democracy and I don’t plan to do anything about it.

“Rich kids/Trump’s kids” (as in, “I don’t want to give free college to Donald Trump’s kids”)

1) I believe that social program X is a commodity, not a public good; 2) if I really cared about economic inequality, I’d raise taxes on the Trumps of this world to pay for it, and 3) my logic could be applied to elementary schools, too, so I hope you don’t think about what I’m saying too much.

“Something we can get done” (as in, “The public option is something we can get done”)

A cautious proposal that can’t get passed as long as Republicans control the Senate, but will not inspire voters to turn the Senate Democratic. In other words, something that can’t get done.

“Universal coverage”

The stated goal of providing every American with inadequate health insurance that ensures neither financial security nor decent medical care.

“You can be progressive and practical at the same time”

I am neither progressive nor practical.

This article was produced by Economy for All, a project of the Independent Media Institute.

Richard “RJ” Eskow is senior adviser for health and economic justice at Social Security Works. He is also the host of The Zero Hour, a syndicated progressive radio and television program.

Iran Supreme Leader Weeps for General Killed by U.S. Airstrike

TEHRAN, Iran — Iran’s supreme leader wept Monday over the casket of a top general killed in a U.S. airstrike in Baghdad, his prayers joining the wails of mourners who flooded the streets of Tehran demanding retaliation against America for a slaying that’s drastically raised tensions across the Middle East.

The funeral for Revolutionary Guard Gen. Qassem Soleimani drew a crowd said by police to be in the millions in the Iranian capital, filling thoroughfares and side streets as far as the eye could see. Although there was no independent estimate, aerial footage and Associated Press journalists suggested a turnout of at least 1 million.

Authorities later brought his remains and others to Iran’s holy city of Qom, turning out another massive crowd.

It was an unprecedented honor for a man viewed by Iranians as a national hero for his work leading the Guard’s expeditionary Quds Force. The U.S. blames him for the killing of American troops in Iraq and accused him of plotting new attacks just before his death Friday. Soleimani also led forces in Syria backing President Bashar Assad in a long war.

His death already has pushed Tehran to abandon the remaining limits of its 2015 nuclear deal with world powers as his successor and others vow to take revenge. In Baghdad, the parliament has called for the expulsion of all American troops from Iraqi soil, something analysts fear could allow Islamic State militants to mount a comeback.

Soleimani’s daughter, Zeinab, directly threatened an attack on the U.S. military in the Mideast while also warning President Donald Trump, whom she called “crazy.”

“The families of the American soldiers … will spend their days waiting for the death of their children,” she said to cheers.

Her language mirrored warnings by other Iranian officials who say an attack on U.S. military interests in the Middle East looms. Iranian state television and others online shared a video that showed Trump’s American flag tweet following Soleimani’s killing turn into a coffin, the “likes” of the tweet replaced by over 143,000 “killed.”

Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei prayed over the caskets of Soleimani and others at Tehran University after a brief mourning period at the capital’s famed Musalla mosque, The mosque was where prayers were said over the body of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, the founder of the Islamic Republic, after his death in 1989.

Khamenei, who had a close relationship with Soleimani and referred to him as a “living martyr,” broke down four times in tears while offering traditional Muslim prayers for the dead.

“Oh God, you took their spirits out of their bodies as they were rolling in their blood for you and were martyred in your way,” Khamenei said as the crowd wailed. Soleimani will be buried Tuesday in his hometown of Kerman.

Soleimani’s successor, Esmail Ghaani, stood near Khamenei’s side as did President Hassan Rouhani and other leaders in the Islamic Republic. While Iran recently faced nationwide protests over government-set gasoline prices that reportedly led to the killing of over 300, Soleimani’s death has brought together people from across the country’s political spectrum, temporarily silencing that anger.

Demonstrators burned Israeli and U.S. flags, carried a flag-draped U.S. coffin or displayed effigies of Trump. Some described Trump himself as a legitimate target.

Mohammad Milad Rashidi, a 26-year-old university graduate, predicted more tension ahead.

“Trump demolished the chance for any sort of possible agreement between Tehran and Washington,” Rashidi said. “There will be more conflict in the future for sure.”

Another mourner, Azita Mardani, warned that Iran “will retaliate for every drop of his blood.”

“We are even thankful to (Trump) because he made us angry and this fury will lead to shedding of their blood in the Persian Gulf and the region’s countries,” Mardani said. “Here will become their graveyard.”

Ghaani made his own threat in an interview shown Monday on Iranian state television. “God the Almighty has promised to get his revenge, and God is the main avenger. Certainly actions will be taken,” he said.

Markets reacted Monday to the tensions, sending international benchmark Brent crude above $70 a barrel for part of the day and gold to a seven-year high. The Middle East remains a crucial source of oil, and Iran in the past has threatened the Strait of Hormuz, the narrow mouth of the Persian Gulf through which 20% of all the world’s oil traded passes.

Ghaani, a longtime Soleimani deputy, has now taken over as the head of the Revolutionary Guard’s Quds, or Jerusalem, Force, answerable only to Khamenei. Ghaani has been sanctioned by the U.S. since 2012 for his work funding its operations around the world, including its work with proxies in Iraq, Lebanon and Yemen.

Those proxies likely will be involved in any operation targeting U.S. interests in the Middle East or elsewhere.

Already, the U.S. Embassy in Saudi Arabia warned Americans “of the heightened risk of missile and drone attacks.” In Lebanon, the leader of the Iranian-backed militant group Hezbollah said Soleimani’s killing made U.S. military bases, warships and service members across the region fair game for attacks.

“We promise to continue down martyr Soleimani’s path as firmly as before with help of God, and in return for his martyrdom we aim to get rid of America from the region,” Ghaani said.

The head of the Guard’s aerospace program, Gen. Amir Ali Hajizadeh, suggested Iran’s response wouldn’t stop with a single attack.

“Firing a couple of missiles, hitting a base or even killing Trump is not valuable enough to compensate for martyr Soleimani’s blood,” Hajizadeh said on state TV. “The only thing that can compensate for his blood is the complete removal of America from the region.”

On the nuclear deal, Iran now says it won’t observe the accord’s restrictions on fuel enrichment, on the size of its enriched uranium stockpile and on its research and development activities. That’s a much-harsher step than they had planned to take before the attack.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel, French President Emmanuel Macron and British Prime Minister Boris Johnson have urged Iran to “withdraw all measures” not in line with the deal.

Iran insisted it remains open to negotiations with European partners over its nuclear program. And it did not back off from earlier promises that it wouldn’t seek a nuclear weapon.

However, the announcement represents the clearest nuclear proliferation threat yet made by Iran since Trump unilaterally withdrew from the accord in 2018 and reimposed sanctions last year. It further raises regional tensions, as Iran’s longtime foe Israel has promised never to allow Iran to produce an atomic bomb.

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Gambrell reported from Dubai, United Arab Emirates.

Weinstein Charged With Sex Crimes in L.A. on Eve of N.Y. Trial

LOS ANGELES — Los Angeles prosecutors charged Harvey Weinstein on Monday with sexually assaulting two women on successive nights during Oscar week in 2013, bringing the new case against the disgraced Hollywood mogul on the eve of jury selection for his New York trial.

The case, brought by a task force set up by the Los Angeles County district attorney to investigate sex-crime allegations against entertainment figures, now puts Weinstein in deep legal peril on both coasts, where he built a career as the one of the most powerful — and feared — figures in show business before a barrage of accusations from more than 75 women led to his downfall and ignited the #MeToo movement.

Weinstein, 67, was charged with raping a woman at a Los Angeles hotel on Feb. 18, 2013, after pushing his way inside her room, then sexually assaulting a woman in a Beverly Hills hotel suite the next night. He could get up to 28 years in prison on charges of forcible rape, forcible oral copulation, sexual penetration by use of force and sexual battery.

“We see you, we hear you and we believe you”’ District Attorney Jackie Lacey said in announcing the charges, addressing herself to the studio boss’ accusers.

Los Angeles Police Chief Michel Moore said the charges open the “next chapter” for a man “who has gotten away with too much for too long,” while Beverly Hills Chief Sandra Spagnoli called the cases “horrendous crimes perpetrated by a sexual predator.”

Lawyers for Weinstein had no immediate comment on the new charges, though he has repeatedly denied any wrongdoing.

Jury selection is set to begin Tuesday in the New York case, in which Weinstein is charged with raping a woman in a New York City hotel room in 2013 and forcibly performing a sex act on another woman in 2006. He has said any sexual activity was consensual. If convicted of the most serious charges, predatory sexual assault, he faces a mandatory life sentence.

“The walls of justice are closing in on Harvey Weinstein. He is now being prosecuted both in New York and Los Angeles,” celebrity attorney Gloria Allred exulted in a statement. Allred represents one of the alleged victims in the New York case as well as actress Annabella Sciorra, who is scheduled to testify against Weinstein in New York as part of an effort by prosecutors to portray him as a sexual predator with a distinct pattern of behavior.

Allred added: “Women are no longer willing to suffer in silence and are willing to testify under oath in a court of law.”

The charges announced Monday in Los Angeles took more than two years to file because the women were reluctant to provide all the information necessary, according to Lacey. The alleged attacks follow a pattern similar to the offenses described in the New York case, dozens of lawsuits and women’s accounts to media outlets.

The first woman said she had been at a film festival with Weinstein, and afterwards in her room he forced her to perform oral sex on him and raped her, then threatened her life if she disclosed the attack, according to court documents. The allegations match the details of an attack described by an Italian model and actress to The Associated Press in 2017 through her lawyer. She asked that her name not be used.

The second woman said she had agreed to meet Weinstein for a business meeting at his Beverly Hills hotel and was unwittingly led into the bathroom of his suite, where a naked Weinstein prevented her from leaving, took down her dress and masturbated as he held her in place by her breast, court papers said.

The task force is still investigating sex-crime allegations against Weinstein from three women, the district attorney said. Prosecutors said they declined to bring charges involving three other women because the cases were beyond the statute of limitations.

Lacey, along with the two police chiefs, urged other victims to come forward. “We need the voices of all victims to help us remove sexual predators from our community and protect others from these violent crimes,” she said.

Weinstein is expected to appear in court in California after his trial in New York is finished, Lacey said. She said prosecutors will recommend $5 million bail.

The district attorney said the timing of the Los Angeles charges was unrelated to the New York trial, explaining that the filing and the announcement came on the first business day on which all the necessary people could be gathered.

Neither woman has stepped forward publicly. But one is expected to testify in the New York case to help prosecutors establish what they say was Weinstein’s pattern of forcing himself on young actresses and women trying to break into Hollywood.

The alleged attacks in Los Angeles County came days before the Hollywood producer was photographed on the Oscars red carpet with his fashion designer wife, Georgina Chapman, who was pregnant at the time.

At the 2013 Academy Awards, Weinstein had several major contenders, including “Silver Linings Playbook,” “Django Unchained” and “The Master.” His movies took home an armful of Oscars, including Jennifer Lawrence’s first Academy Award and trophies for director Quentin Tarantino and actor Christoph Waltz.

At the time, the allegations against Weinstein were little more than rumors around Hollywood. When that year’s nominees were announced, emcee Seth MacFarlane joked after reading the list of contenders for best supporting actress: “Congratulations, you five ladies no longer have to pretend to be attracted to Harvey Weinstein.”

The charges are the first to be brought by the task force in the two years since it was formed. It has investigated more than 20 men, many of them prominent actors and producers, but declined to file charges in nearly all, usually citing statutes of limitations.

Earlier in the day Monday, Weinstein and several of the women who have accused him converged at a New York City courthouse for final preparations for his trial.

Weinstein’s attorneys suggested they knew the additional charges might be coming — “There is a potential L.A. situation going on,” his lawyer Donna Rotunno told reporters — and asked the judge to sequester the potential jurors to shield them from the news. Judge James Burke refused and also declined to impose a gag order to prevent Weinstein’s attorneys from speaking to the media.

Across the street, actresses and other women who say they were sexually harassed or assaulted by Weinstein branded him a villain undeserving of anyone’s pity.

“He looked cowardly. He wouldn’t look at us. He wouldn’t make eye contact,” said Sarah Ann Masse, a performer and writer who said Weinstein once sexually harassed her in his underwear during a job interview. “This trial is a cultural reckoning regardless of its legal outcome.”

Rotunno said she was hopeful a fair jury could be found:. “In this great country, you are innocent until proven guilty.”

After a string of successes at Miramax and Weinstein Co. with movies such as “Pulp Fiction” “Shakespeare in Love” and “The King’s Speech,” the studio boss met his downfall when many of the allegations against him were brought to light by The New York Times and The New Yorker in October 2017.

____

Hays and Sisak reported from New York. Associated Press writers Stefanie Dazio in Los Angeles and Jake Coyle in New York contributed to this story.

Trump Threatens Armageddon in Afghanistan

On February 4, 2002, a Predator drone circled over Afghanistan’s Paktia province, near the city of Khost. Below was al-Qaeda’s founder Osama bin Laden — or at least someone in the CIA thought so — and he was marked for death. As Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld put it later, both awkwardly and passively: “A decision was made to fire the Hellfire missile. It was fired.”  That air-to-ground, laser-guided missile — designed to obliterate tanks, bunkers, helicopters, and people — did exactly what it was meant to do.

As it happened, though (and not for the first time in its history either), the CIA got it wrong. It wasn’t Osama bin Laden on the receiving end of that strike, or a member of al-Qaeda, or even of the Taliban. The dead, local witnesses reported, were civilians out collecting scrap metal, ordinary people going about their daily work just as thousands of Americans had been doing at the World Trade Center only months earlier when terror struck from the skies.

In the years since, those Afghan scrap collectors have been joined by more than 157,000 war dead in that embattled land. That’s a heavy toll, but represents just a fraction of the body count from America’s post-9/11 wars. According to a study by the Costs of War Project of Brown University’s Watson Institute, as many as 801,000 people, combatants and noncombatants alike, have been killed in those conflicts. That’s a staggering number, the equivalent of the Rwandan genocide of 1994. But if President Donald Trump is to be believed, the United States has “plans” that could bury that grim count in staggering numbers of dead. The “method of war” he suggested employing could produce more than 20 times that number in a single country — an estimated 20 million or more Afghans, almost all of them civilians.

It’s a strange fact of our moment that President Trump has claimed to have “plans” (or “a method”) for annihilating millions of innocent people, possibly most of the population of Afghanistan. Yet those comments of his barely made the news, disappearing within days. Even for a president who threatened to unleash “fire and fury” on North Korea and usher in “the end” of Iran, hinting at the possibility of wiping out most of the civilian population of an ally represented something new.

After all, America’s commander-in-chief does have the authority, at his sole discretion, to order the launch of weapons from the vast U.S. nuclear arsenal. So it was no small thing last year when President Trump suggested that he might unleash a “method of war” that would kill at least 54% of the roughly 37 million inhabitants of Afghanistan.

And yet almost no one — in Washington or Kabul — wanted to touch such presidential comments. The White House, the Pentagon, and the State Department all demurred. So did the chief spokesman for Afghan President Ashraf Ghani. One high-ranking Afghan official apologized to me for being unable to respond honestly to President Trump’s comments. A current American official expressed worry that reacting to the president’s Afghan threats might provoke a presidential tweet storm against him and refused to comment on the record.

Experts, however, weren’t shy about weighing in on what such “plans,” if real and utilized, would actually mean. Employing such a method (to use the president’s term), they say, would constitute a war crime, a crime against humanity, and possibly a genocide.

A Trumpian Crime Against Humanity

“Massive Soviet military forces have invaded the small, nonaligned sovereign nation of Afghanistan,” President Jimmy Carter announced on January 4, 1980. “Fifty thousand heavily armed Soviet troops have crossed the border and are now dispersed throughout Afghanistan, attempting to conquer the fiercely independent Muslim people of that country.” Nine years later, the Red Army would finally limp out of that land in the wake of a war that killed an estimated 90,000 Mujahideen fighters, 18,000 Afghan troops, and 14,500 Soviet soldiers. As has been the norm in conflicts since World War I, however, civilians suffered the heaviest toll. Around one million were estimated to have been killed.

In the 18-plus years since U.S. forces invaded that same country in October 2001, the death toll has been far lower. Around 7,300 U.S. military personnel, contractors, and allied foreign forces have died there, as have 64,000 American-allied Afghans, 42,000 opposition fighters, and 43,000 civilians, according to the Costs of War Project. If President Trump is to be believed, however, this body count is low only due to American restraint.

“I have plans on Afghanistan that, if I wanted to win that war, Afghanistan would be wiped off the face of the Earth. It would be gone,” the president remarked prior to a July 2019 meeting with Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan. “If we wanted to fight a war in Afghanistan and win it, I could win that war in a week. I just don’t want to kill 10 million people.”  In September, he ramped up the rhetoric — and the death toll — further. “We’ve been very effective in Afghanistan,” he said. “And if we wanted to do a certain method of war, we would win that very quickly, but many, many, really, tens of millions of people would be killed.”

If America’s commander-in-chief is to be believed, plans and methods are already in place for a mass killing whose death toll could, at a minimum, exceed those of the Holocaust, the Cambodian genocide, the Rwandan genocide, the Vietnam War, the Korean War, the Hundred Years’ War, and the American Revolution combined — and all in a country where the Pentagon believes there are only 40,000 to 80,000 Taliban fighters and fewer than 2,000 Islamic State militants.

President Trump claims he’d prefer not to use such methods, but if he did, say experts, his Senate impeachment trial could theoretically be followed by a more consequential one in front of an international tribunal.  “Of course, any ‘method of war’ that would kill ‘10 million people’ or ‘tens of millions’ of people in a country where the fighting force consists of 40,000 to 80,000 would be a blatant violation of the laws of war and would render President Trump a war criminal,” Daphne Eviatar, director of the Security with Human Rights program at Amnesty International USA, told TomDispatch.

Max Pensky, the co-director of the Institute for Genocide and Mass Atrocity Prevention at the State University of New York at Binghamton, agreed. “Carrying out such a plan would certainly be a war crime because of the context of the armed conflict in Afghanistan,” he said. “And it would absolutely be a crime against humanity.” He noted that it might also constitute a genocide depending on the intent behind it.

The United States has, of course, been a pioneer when it comes to both the conduct and the constraint of warfare. For example, “General Orders No. 100: Instructions for the Government of the Armies of the United States in the Field,” issued by President Abraham Lincoln on April 24, 1863, represents the first modern codification of the laws of war. “The principle has been more and more acknowledged that the unarmed citizen is to be spared in person, property, and honor as much as the exigencies of war will admit,” reads the 157-year-old code. “All wanton violence committed against persons in the invaded country, all destruction of property not commanded by the authorized officer, all robbery, all pillage or sacking, even after taking a place by main force, all rape, wounding, maiming, or killing of such inhabitants, are prohibited under the penalty of death, or such other severe punishment as may seem adequate for the gravity of the offense.”

More recently, however, the United States has set the rules of the road when it comes to borderless assassination. In asserting the right of the military and the CIA to use armed drones to kill people from Pakistan to Yemen, Somalia to Libya, through quasi-secret and opaque processes, while ignoring previous American norms against “targeted killing,” questions about national sovereignty, and existing international law, the U.S. has created a ready framework for other nations to mimic. In October 2019, for example, Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan hinted that he would assassinate Mazloum Kobani, the head of the Syrian Democratic Forces and a key U.S. ally in the fight against the Islamic State in Syria. “Some countries eliminate terrorists whom they consider as a threat to their national security, wherever they are,” Erdogan said. “Therefore, this means those countries accept that Turkey has the same right.”

Historically, the United States has also pioneered the use of weapons of mass destruction. While a White House spokesperson would not address the question of whether President Trump was alluding to the use of nuclear weapons when he claimed that “Afghanistan would be wiped off the face of the Earth,” it’s notable that the United States is the only country to have used such weaponry in an actual war.

The first nuclear attack, the U.S. strike on Hiroshima, Japan, on August 6, 1945, left that city “uniformly and extensively devastated,” according to a study carried out in the wake of the attacks by the U.S. Strategic Bombing Survey. “The surprise, the collapse of many buildings, and the conflagration contributed to an unprecedented casualty rate.” Between 60,000 and 80,000 people were killed instantly. The final death toll, including those who later perished from the long-term effects of radiation sickness, was estimated at 135,000 to 150,000. An atomic attack on Nagasaki, carried out three days later, was calculated to have killed another 50,000 to 75,000 people.

Theoretical War Crimes and Real Civilian Deaths

Just days before mentioning the possibility of annihilating tens of millions of Afghans, President Trump took the Taliban to task for killing 12 people, including 10 Afghan civilians and one American soldier, in a car bombing while peace talks with the militant group were underway. At the time, he tweeted: “What kind of people would kill so many in order to seemingly strengthen their bargaining position?” Weeks later, he would clear three military service members of war crimes, one of them convicted of murdering two Afghan civilians, another charged with the murder of an Afghan man.

Amnesty’s Daphne Eviatar believes that the president’s “disregard toward the lives of civilians” may have led to less precise American attacks in recent years. “We’ve seen a dramatic rise in civilian casualties from U.S. military operations since Trump took office, including in Afghanistan,” she told TomDispatch.

An October report by the United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan (UNAMA), analyzing the war from July to the end of September 2019, documented the highest number of civilian casualties it had recorded in a single quarter since it began systematically doing so in 2009. During the first nine months of last year, in fact, UNAMA tallied the deaths of 2,563 civilians and the wounding of 5,676 more — the majority by “anti-government” forces, including the Taliban and ISIS. UNAMA found, however, that “pro-government forces,” including the U.S. military, killed 1,149 people and injured 1,199 others in that period, a 26% increase from the corresponding timeframe in 2018.

Of course, such numbers would be dwarfed were Donald Trump to decide to “win” the Afghan War in the fashion he hinted at twice last year, even as peace talks with the Taliban were underway. Johnny Walsh, a senior expert on Afghanistan at the United States Institute of Peace and a former lead adviser for the State Department on the Afghan peace process, chalked Trump’s purported plans up to a “rhetorical flourish” and doubts they actually exist. “I am not at all aware of any plan to escalate the conflict or use nuclear weapons,” he told TomDispatch.

Whether or not such plans are real, civilian casualties in Afghanistan continue to rise, prompting experts to call for additional scrutiny of U.S. military operations.  “It’s tempting to dismiss some of the President’s more provocative statements,” said Amnesty’s Daphne Eviatar, “but we do need to take very seriously the exponential increase in civilian casualties from U.S. military operations since 2017 and ensure every one is thoroughly and independently investigated, and the results made public, so we can know if they’re the result of an unlawful Trump administration policy or practice.”

As 2020 begins, with America’s Afghan war in its 19th year and “progress” as nonexistent as ever, a beleaguered president continues to mull over just how to end America’s “endless wars” (while seemingly expanding them further). Under the circumstances, who knows what might happen in Afghanistan? Will 2020 be the year of peace or of Armageddon there — or will it simply bring more of the same?  With a president for whom “plans” may be more figurative than literal, all of this and the fate of perhaps 20 million or more Afghans remain among the great “unknown unknowns” of our time.

Iran Abandons 2015 Deal’s Nuclear Limits

TEHRAN, Iran — The blowback over the U.S. killing of a top Iranian general mounted Sunday as Iran announced it is abandoning the limits contained in the 2015 nuclear deal and Iraq’s Parliament called for the expulsion of all American troops from Iraqi soil.

The twin developments, if they come to pass, could bring Iran closer to building an atomic bomb and enable the Islamic State group to stage a comeback in Iraq, making the Middle East a far more dangerous and unstable place.

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Iranian state television cited a statement by President Hassan Rouhani’s administration saying the country would not observe limits on fuel enrichment, on the size of its enriched uranium stockpile and on its research and development activities.

“The Islamic Republic of Iran no longer faces any limitations in operations,” a state TV broadcaster said.

In Iraq, meanwhile, lawmakers voted in favor of a resolution calling for an end of the foreign military presence in the country, including the estimated 5,000 U.S. troops stationed to help battle the Islamic State group. The bill is nonbinding and subject to approval by the Iraqi government but has the backing of the outgoing prime minister.

The two decisions capped a day of mass mourning over Iranian Maj. Gen. Qassem Soleimani, killed in a U.S. drone strike in Baghdad on Friday. Hundreds of thousands of people flooded the streets in the cities of Ahvaz and Mashhad to walk alongside the casket of Soleimani, who was the architect of Iran’s proxy wars across the Mideast and was blamed for the deaths of hundreds of Americans in suicide bombings and other attacks.

Iran insisted that it remains open to negotiations with European partners over its nuclear program. And it did not back off from earlier promises that it wouldn’t seek a nuclear weapon.

However, the announcement represents the clearest nuclear proliferation threat yet made by Iran since President Donald Trump unilaterally withdrew from the accord in May 2018. It further raises regional tensions, as Iran’s longtime foe Israel has promised never to allow Iran to produce an atomic bomb.

Iran did not elaborate on what levels it would immediately reach in its program. Tehran has already increased its production, begun enriching uranium to 5% and restarted enrichment at an underground facility.

While it does not posses uranium enriched to weapons-grade levels of 90%, any push forward narrows the estimated one-year “breakout time” needed for it to have enough material to build a nuclear weapon if it chose to do so.

The International Atomic Energy Agency, the United Nations watchdog observing Iran’s program, did not immediately respond to a request for comment. However, Iran said that its cooperation with the IAEA “will continue as before.”

Foreign Ministry spokesman Abbas Mousavi earlier told journalists that Soleimani’s killing would prompt Iranian officials to take an even harsher step away from the nuclear deal.

“In the world of politics, all developments are interconnected,” Mousavi said.

In Iraq, Prime Minister Adel Abdul-Mahdi said that after the killing of Soleimani, the government has two choices: End the presence of foreign troops in Iraq or restrict their mission to training Iraqi forces. He called for the first option.

Iraqi officials have denounced the airstrike as a violation of the country’s sovereignty.

The majority of about 180 legislators present in Parliament voted in favor of the troop-removal resolution. It was backed by most Shiite members of Parliament, who hold a majority of seats. Many Sunni and Kurdish legislators did not show up for the session, apparently because they oppose abolishing the deal.

Asked shortly before the parliamentary vote whether the U.S. would comply with an Iraqi government request for American troops to leave, U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo would not answer directly.

But the added: “It is the United States that is prepared to help the Iraqi people get what it is they deserve and continue our mission there to take down terrorism from ISIS and others in the region.”

Amid threats of vengeance from Iran, the U.S.-led military coalition in Iraq said Sunday it is putting the battle against IS militants on hold to focus on protecting its own troops and bases. A U.S. pullout could not only allow the Islamic State to make a comeback but could also enable Iran to deepen its influence in Iraq, which like Iran is a majority-Shiite country.

Meanwhile, in Lebanon, the leader of Iran’s major proxy, the militant group Hezbollah, said Soleimani’s killing made U.S. military bases, warships and service members across the region fair targets for attacks. A former Revolutionary Guard leader suggested the Israeli city of Haifa and centers like Tel Aviv could be targeted.

Soleimani’s killing has escalated the crisis between Tehran and Washington after months of back-and-forth attacks and threats that have put the wider Middle East on edge. Iran has promised “harsh revenge” for the U.S. attack, while Trump has likewise warned on Twitter that the U.S. will strike back at 52 targets “VERY FAST AND VERY HARD.”

The U.S. Embassy in Saudi Arabia warned Americans “of the heightened risk of missile and drone attacks.”

Iranian state TV estimated that a million mourners came out to the Imam Reza shrine in the city of Mashhad to pay their respects to Soleimani, although that number could not be independently verified.

The casket moved slowly through streets choked with mourners wearing black, beating their chests and carrying posters with Soleimani’s portrait. Demonstrators also carried red Shiite flags, which traditionally symbolize both the spilled blood of someone unjustly killed and a call for vengeance.

The processions mark the first time Iran honored a single man with a multi-city ceremony. Not even Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, who founded the Islamic Republic, received such a processional with his death in 1989. Soleimani on Monday will lie in state at Tehran’s famed Musalla mosque as the revolutionary leader did before him.

Soleimani’s remains will go to Tehran and Qom on Monday for public mourning processions. He will be buried in his hometown of Kerman.

___

Gambrell reported from Dubai, United Arab Emirates and Karam reported from Beirut. Associated Press writers Aya Batrawy in Dubai, Qassim Abdul-Zahra in Baghdad, Sarah El Deeb in Beirut and Kelvin Chan in London contributed to this report.

5 Dead, Dozens Hospitalized in Pennsylvania Turnpike Crash

GREENSBURG, Pa. — A deadly crash involving a passenger bus and multiple other vehicles on the Pennsylvania Turnpike left five dead and dozens injured early Sunday, shutting down a large portion of the highway.

Officials said at least 60 people, with victims ranging from 7 to 52 years old, were hospitalized after the crash that happened at 3:40 a.m. in Westmoreland County, around 30 miles (50 kilometers) east of Pittsburgh. Stephen Limani, Pennsylvania State Police spokesperson, said at a press conference that none of the injuries are considered life-threatening, though two patients remain in critical condition.

Limani said the bus, operated by a New Jersey-based company called Z & D Tours, was traveling from Rockaway, New Jersey, to Cincinnati, Ohio. It was first struck by two tractor-trailers, then another truck and a passenger car. Photos from the scene show a mangled collision of multiple vehicles including an overturned bus, two tractor-trailers, a passenger car and a smashed FedEx truck that left packages sprawled along the highway.

“It was kind of a chain-reaction crash,” Limani said.

FedEx did not provide any other details besides that they are cooperating with authorities. A message seeking comment was left Sunday with the bus company.

Limani would not identify those killed or say which vehicles they were traveling in because families have not yet been notified.

There were 25 victims transported to Excela Frick Hospital in Mt. Pleasant, Excela Health spokeswoman Robin Jennings said. Nine of those patients are under the age of 18.

At least one of the 25 victims initially sent to Excela was transported to a nearby trauma center.

”I haven’t personally witnessed a crash of this magnitude in 20 years,” Pennsylvania Turnpike spokesman Carl DeFebo told WTAE, calling it the worst accident in his decades-long tenure with the turnpike. “It’s horrible.”

The National Transportation Safety Board announced Sunday that it dispatched a team of more than a dozen to investigate.

Officials said it was too early to determine if weather was a main factor in the crash. The National Weather Service forecast for Westmoreland County early Sunday listed light unknown precipitation and an air temperature just below freezing.

Angela Maynard, a tractor-trailer driver from Kentucky, said the roads were wet from snow but not especially icy. Maynard was traveling eastbound on the turnpike when she came upon the crash site and called 911.

“It was horrible,” she told The Tribune-Review. She saw lots of smoke but no fire. She and her co-driver found one person trapped in their truck and another lying on the ground.

“I tried to keep him occupied, keep talking, until medical help arrived,” Maynard said. “He was in bad shape. He was floating in and out of consciousness.”

The highway remains closed in both directions indefinitely. Local fire and emergency medical crews are on scene, along with a hazardous material company cleaning up fuel and other materials. A towing company is getting ready to begin separating the vehicles and getting them cleared.

“It’s a very extensive crash so a lot of work has to be done to get the roadway reconditioned and ready to handle traffic again,” said Craig Shuey, the turnpike’s chief operating officer.

—

Associated Press reporters Sophia Rosenbaum in New York, Mark Scolforo in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, and Claire Galofaro in Louisville, Kentucky, contributed to this report.

AOC Calls Trump a ‘Monster’ for His Actions in Iran

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez Saturday night called President Donald Trump a “monster” for threatening to target more than 50 Iranian sites—including some he said are ” important to Iran and the Iranian culture”—if Tehran retaliates for the U.S. assassination of General Qasem Soleimani.

“This is a war crime,” Ocasio-Cortez, a Democrat from New York, tweeted in response to the president’s warning. “Threatening to target and kill innocent families, women, and children—which is what you’re doing by targeting cultural sites—does not make you a ‘tough guy.’ It does not make you ‘strategic.’ It makes you a monster.”

This is a war crime.

Threatening to target and kill innocent families, women and children – which is what you’re doing by targeting cultural sites – does not make you a “tough guy.”

It does not make you “strategic.”

It makes you a monster. https://t.co/IjkNO8BD07

— Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (@AOC) January 5, 2020

In a series of tweets Saturday night after thousands across the U.S. rallied against war with Iran, Trump said the U.S. is prepared to strike “52 Iranian sites (representing the 52 American hostages taken by Iran many years ago), some at a very high level and important to Iran and the Iranian culture,” if Tehran targets any Americans or “American assets” in response to Soleimani’s assassination.

Intentionally targeting cultural and non-military sites is a war crime under international law, as observers hastened to point out in response to the president’s threat.

Trump’s tweet came hours after the White House formally notified Congress Saturday of the strike on Soleimani, as required by the War Powers Act of 1973.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) said in a statement that the classified document delivered by the Trump administration “raises more questions than it answers.” As Common Dreams reported, the White House has yet to provide any evidence for its assertion that the strike against Soleimani was aimed at preventing “imminent” attacks against Americans in the Middle East.

“This document prompts serious and urgent questions about the timing, manner, and justification of the administration’s decision to engage in hostilities against Iran,” said Pelosi. “The highly unusual decision to classify this document in its entirety compounds our many concerns, and suggests that the Congress and the American people are being left in the dark about our national security.”