It's Friday, so that means it's panel time.
Earlier Friday, US President Donald Trump described the decision-making process to call off an attack on Iran in order to avoid disproportionate casualties. His decision and his account of such are facing scrutiny from aides around him and military analysts questioning the sequence of events he laid out in tweets and statements. The president said he called off the strike at the last minute because it would kill 150 people in retaliation for the downing of an unmanned surveillance drone. “We were cocked & loaded to retaliate last night on 3 different sights when I asked, how many will die,” he tweeted. But administration officials said Trump was told earlier Thursday how many casualties could occur if a strike on Iran was carried out, and that he had given the green light to prepare for the operation Thursday morning. The decision has divided his top advisers, with senior Pentagon officials opposing the decision to strike and National Security Adviser John Bolton strongly supporting it.
China’s President Xi Jinping went to North Korea to hold talks with Kim Jong Un before this month's G-20 summit, while Trump and Canadian prime Minister Justin Trudeau discussed the North American trade deal in the context of the trade war with China. Xi arrived in North Korea for a historic summit with Kim Thursday, becoming the first Chinese leader to travel to the country in 14 years. His two-day trip comes days before Xi is scheduled to meet with Trump during a Group of 20 summit in Japan. Is this pre-game strategy between Xi and Kim?
The Democrat-controlled House of Representatives passed a $1 trillion spending bill Wednesday that amounts to what some describe as an opening bid in a guns vs. butter fight with the Trump administration. The measure far exceeds Trump’s budget request for domestic programs, attracting a White House veto threat, but denies him his full Pentagon budget increase. The House bill includes $733 billion for the Pentagon, up from $716 billion the previous year. Trump demanded $750 billion.
The Philadelphia Police Department announced Wednesday it had taken 72 officers off the streets in response to the discovery of thousands of offensive social media posts by the officers, including violent messages and racist memes. The officers were placed on desk duty as the social media scandal brews, implicating more than 300 officers of the city’s 6,500-strong police force. The posts came to light as part of the work of the Plain View Project, a group of lawyers that began monitoring the social media accounts of Philadelphia officers in the fall of 2017 in order to assess whether the officers’ online behavior eroded public trust in the police force. The group’s data collection ended up identifying offensive posts by 2,900 officers, including hundreds more former officers across eight police departments. The data dump has caused police departments in other cities — including Phoenix, St. Louis and Dallas — to assess how to discipline their officers for offensive posts.
In a thorough and damning report on the murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi released Wednesday, United Nations Special Rapporteur on Extrajudicial, Summary or Arbitrary Executions Agnes Callamard concluded, after a nearly six-month investigation, that Khashoggi was the victim of a “deliberate, premeditated execution” and his kidnapping and murder violated international law. She added that Khashoggi may have been tortured. "Evidence points to the 15-person mission to execute Mr. Khashoggi requiring significant government coordination, resources, and finances," Callamard wrote. "Every expert consulted finds it inconceivable that an operation of this scale could be implemented without the crown prince being aware, at a minimum, that some sort of mission of a criminal nature, directed at Mr. Khashoggi, was being launched." We have talked in the past about how this heinous murder has been used as the rationale for members of Congress to oppose the US involvement in the Saudi war against Yemen.
GUESTS:
Daniel Lazare — Journalist and author of three books: "The Frozen Republic," "The Velvet Coup" and "America's Undeclared War."
Dr. Jack Rasmus — Professor of economics at Saint Mary's College of California and author of "Central Bankers at the End of Their Ropes: Monetary Policy and the Coming Depression."
Caleb Maupin — Journalist and political analyst who focuses his coverage on US foreign policy and the global system of monopoly capitalism and imperialism.
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