On the recordFebruary 12, 2020
Madam President, today we are taking up a War Powers Resolution ostensibly aimed at hostilities with Iran. The impetus for this resolution was the strike the President authorized to take out Iranian General Qasem Soleimani. Iran has a long history of fomenting violence and conflict in the Middle East, and General Soleimani was always right in the center of that. As head of the Quds Force of Iran's Revolutionary Guard Corps, Soleimani masterminded Iran's terrorist activities for two decades. Iran has been linked to one in six U.S. military deaths in Iraq, notably through the IEDs that have become so emblematic of the War on Terror. This was Soleimani's work. He is responsible for the deaths of hundreds of American soldiers and countless innocent civilians, and the threat Iran poses to U.S. personnel is an ongoing threat. At the end of December, an Iran-backed militia fired more than 30 rockets at an Iraqi military base, killing an American contractor and wounding four U.S. troops. Days later, Iran-backed protesters stormed the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad, conducting a 2-day siege of the Embassy before withdrawing. The strike on General Soleimani wasn't just based on these recent attacks or on Soleimani's long reign of terror in the Middle East. The President authorized the strike on Soleimani because there was credible intelligence that Soleimani was planning imminent attacks against U.S. interests. That was the conclusion not of the President but of the U.S.…





