[thephyber]

The White House has admitted that Israel had actionable intelligence that several of the Iranian political leadership were having a physical meeting together and they decided to attack to decapitate the government. The US decided to attack Iranian capabilities preemptively to reduce the inevitable response to US military, embassies, and allies in the region.

[voganmother42]

Striking schools and killing school children has not reduced the inevitable response.

[mullingitover]

It’s bad enough the politicians lied when they campaigned on no more wars in the Middle East, they don’t need to insult our intelligence with these moronic cover stories.

If they didn’t want Israel dragging the US into wars they could’ve just placed a call to Iran to warn them.

[thephyber]

I see the White House adopting the strategy that the Russian and USSR government / state media use frequently: change the narrative early and often, to the point where people don’t feel like they can ever know the truth.

The downing of flight MH-17 as reported by Russian media was instructive. https://www.atlanticcouncil.org/blogs/ukrainealert/russian-m...

I also frequently refer back to why Russian language has 2 different words for truth: istina and pravda.

[Dylan16807]

> they could’ve just placed a call to Iran to warn them

Deciding not to betray your ally isn't a "moronic cover story".

If you're going to portray that as the alternative you actually make their actions sound more reasonable.

[mullingitover]

If your “ally” is, as this story goes, forcing you into a war against your will, protecting your own citizens and troops takes priority over any favors you might owe these “friends.”

Of course if you actually wanted to start this war, and wanted a low effort cover story, you’d…do exactly this kind of lazy, low effort lie.

[Dylan16807]

What are you even calling a lie? (not the campaign promises, the recent statements) The claims are something like this, right?: 1. Israel decided to attack 2. The US thought about how that would play out. 3. The US decided to attack too.

Which of those claims is untrue? Is there a claim I missed?

"The US could have snitched to Iran" does not contradict any of those claims.

Also I'm not convinced that warning Iran would have made things much safer for US troops. And you can say what you want about what the US priorities should be, but that's a whole different discussion.

[mullingitover]

The US claim is that their attack is a sort of pre-emptive self-defense because Israel forced their hand. That’s what I’m calling a lie: Israel could’ve been dissuaded, trivially, if the US didn’t want to start a war with Iran.

[Dylan16807]

Their hand was forced, and it was "a sort of pre-emptive self-defense". I'm still not seeing the lie. You think they should have done something different, but "should have done something different" is a completely different criticism.

And what you think is "trivial" is far from certain.

[pstuart]

We live in a post truth age, unfortunately. Many citizens are happy to only hew to the truth that they want, versus the "real" truth. (note the quotes -- truth is tricky).

There's a bitter irony in this issue -- toppling the regime in Iran would be a wonderful thing, but doing so via bombs is not the way. We have Afghanistan and Iraq as very dear lessons in how not to do it.