War Iran-United States Military Crisis of 2020 - US Baghdad embassy under siege, rocket fire in US Baghdad green zone, Ukrainian Airlines flight 752 crash, and more!

January 10th:
Exclusive: Informants in Iraq, Syria helped U.S. kill Iran's Soleimani - sources (archive)(post)
Iraqi Shia cleric whose militia killed American troops says crisis is over following Iran strike and Trump speech (archive)(post)
Iraqi PM tells US to decide mechanism for troop withdrawal (archive)(post)
Mike Pence says Congress might 'compromise sources and methods' if fully briefed on the Soleimani strike (archive)(post)
Unidentified planes hit Iraqi militiamen in Syria, killing 8 (archive)(post)
Iraq: The Master Of Mayhem Meets A Missile (archive)(post)
Eliminating Qasem Soleimani was Donald Trump’s Middle East farewell letter (archive)(post)
Iran uses BULLDOZERS to clear debris from plane crash site while accusing US of ‘big lie’ that they shot it down (archive)(post)
Swiss Back Channel Helped Defuse U.S.-Iran Crisis (post)

January 11th:
UKRAINIAN AIRCRAFT WAS BROUGHT DOWN IN IRAN DUE TO 'HUMAN ERROR' (archive)(post)
Iran minister says 'human error' caused by 'US adventurism' led to deadly crash of Ukrainian jetliner (archive)(post)
Ukrainian aircraft was brought down in Iran due to 'human error' (archive)(post)
Trump, at Ohio rally, says Democrats would have leaked Soleimani attack plans (archive)(post)
The Atlantic's David Frum blames Trump for downing of plane in Iran, deaths of 176 (archive)(post)
Associated Press changes ‘shockingly bad’ headline about Soleimani, Ukrainian plane crash after backlash (archive)(post)
GOP Rep. Doug Collins apologizes for saying Democrats are 'in love with terrorists' (archive)(post)
Iran demands West 'show findings' as new video reveals aircraft was struck before fiery crash (archive)(post)
Warren town hall interrupted by angry protester accusing her of ‘siding with terrorists’ (archive)(post)
Trump administration announces new sanctions on Iran (archive)(post)
Prepare For the Worst From Iran Cyber Attacks, As DHS Issues Warning: Experts (archive)(post)
Trump tells Fox News' Laura Ingraham 'four embassies' were targeted in imminent threat from Iran (archive)(post)
Trump tweets support for Iranian protesters as they demand Khamenei quit (archive)(post)
Trump warns Iran against ‘another massacre’ as protests flare over downed jet (archive)(post)

January 12th:
Trump tweet in Farsi 'the most liked Persian tweet' in history of Twitter (archive)(post)
Iraq warned to keep US troops or risk financial blow-WSJ (archive)(post)
Iran arrests UK ambassador in what Britain calls ‘flagrant violation of international law’ (archive)(post)

January 13th:
Trump authorized Soleimani's killing 7 months ago, with conditions (archive)(post)

edit: This is a WIP. All links are posted in the order they appear in the thread, not in chronological order of their publication.


---Original OP before the merge---
Iraqi supporters of Iran-backed militia attack US Embassy
https://apnews.com/75228a8a607a44863b57021ac33264dc (http://archive.vn/ljm9Y)

By QASSIM ABDUL-ZAHRA12 minutes ago

BAGHDAD (AP) — Dozens of angry Iraqi Shiite militia supporters broke into the U.S. Embassy compound in Baghdad on Tuesday after smashing a main door and setting fire to a reception area, prompting tear gas and sounds of gunfire.

An Associated Press reporter at the scene saw flames rising from inside the compound and at least three U.S. soldiers on the roof of the main building inside embassy. It was not clear what caused the fire at the reception area near the parking lot of the compound. A man on a loudspeaker urged the mob not to enter the compound, saying: “The message was delivered.”

The embassy attack followed deadly U.S. airstrikes on Sunday that killed 25 fighters of the Iran-backed militia in Iraq, the Kataeb Hezbollah. The U.S. military said it was in retaliation for last week’s killing of an American contractor in a rocket attack on an Iraqi military base that it had blamed on the militia.

Dozens of protesters marched inside the compound after smashing the gate used by cars to enter the embassy. The protesters, many in militia uniform, stopped in a corridor after about 5 meters (16 feet), and were only about 200 meters away from the main building. Half a dozen U.S. soldiers were seen on the roof of the main building, their guns were pointed at the protesters.

Smoke from the tear gas rose in the area, and at least three of the protesters appeared to have difficulties breathing. It wasn’t immediately known whether the embassy staff had remained inside the main building.

The protesters hanged a poster on the wall: “America is an aggressor.”

Shouting “Down, Down USA,” the crowd tried to push inside the embassy grounds, hurling water and stones over its walls. They raised yellow militia flags and taunted the embassy’s security staff who remained behind the glass windows in the gates’ reception area. They sprayed graffiti on the wall and windows in red in support of the Kataeb Hezbollah militia: “Closed in the name of the resistance.”

Hundreds of angry protesters, some in militia uniforms, set up tents outside the embassy. As tempers rose, the mob set fire to three trailers used by security guards along the embassy wall.

No one was immediately reported hurt in the rampage and security staff had withdrawn to inside the embassy earlier, soon after protesters gathered outside.

The U.S. attack — the largest targeting an Iraqi state-sanctioned militia in recent years — and the subsequent calls by the militia for retaliation, represent a new escalation in the proxy war between the U.S. and Iran playing out in the Middle East.

Tuesday’s attempted embassy storming took place after mourners and supporters held funerals for the militia fighters killed in a Baghdad neighborhood, after which they marched on to the heavily fortified Green Zone and kept walking till they reached the sprawling U.S. Embassy there.

AP journalists then saw the crowd as they tried to scale the walls of the embassy, in what appeared to be an attempt to storm it, shouting “Down, down USA!” and “Death to America” and “Death to Israel.”

U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said Sunday’s strikes send the message that the U.S. will not tolerate actions by Iran that jeopardize American lives.

The Iranian-backed Iraqi militia had vowed Monday to retaliate for the U.S. military strikes. The attack and vows for revenge raised concerns of new attacks that could threaten American interests in the region.

The U.S. attack also outraged both the militias and the Iraqi government, which said it will reconsider its relationship with the U.S.-led coalition — the first time it has said it will do so since an agreement was struck to keep some U.S. troops in the country. It called the attack a “flagrant violation” of its sovereignty.

In a partly televised meeting Monday, Iraqi Prime Minister Adel Abdul-Mahdi told Cabinet members that he had tried to stop the U.S. operation “but there was insistence” from American officials.

The U.S. military said “precision defensive strikes” were conducted against five sites of Kataeb Hezbollah, or Hezbollah Brigades in Iraq and Syria. The group, which is a separate force from the Lebanese militant group Hezbollah, operates under the umbrella of the state-sanctioned militias known collectively as the Popular Mobilization Forces. Many of them are supported by Iran.

.

 

[Vince McMahon]

Yes, me not underestimating a country of one billion people that is moving at about seven times the pace of the US is me being a lolcow.

There is no more universally controversial opinion that I hold than that the Chinese are more organized and forward-thinking than people give them credit for. To absolutely everyone, the average Chinese person shits in a field, eats egg fermented in virgin boy urine, fries their food with recycled oil, and barbecues dogs. Giving the country any more credit than you'd give the DPRK is a sign of delusion and falling for propaganda. The Chinese are nothing more than rice niggers and factory monkeys who make your iPhone and should never be thought of in any positive light.

People get what they fucking deserve. That's all I gotta say.

Underestimating your enemy is bad, we all agree. However, you don't need to be overly supportive of the rice niggers, just to show SJWs what for. You just sound like you're going against the circlejerk to own the libs and yet doing a shit job out of it.

There are always those, who survive in any environment. But when multiple people, from multiple environments all report that China is fucked up and that front that Westerners see (and which works on you, it seems) is just that, a front, you don't have to go all "PROSPERITY AND UNITY FOR ALL CHINESE" on us. We're not stupid. They're capable but they're far more disunited inside their own country that they project to the world.

 

[Observotron]

Are we sure it wasn't about Epstein?

Hopefully this adds some levity to the thread, but can you imagine the reaction in 10 years if that turns out to be true.

 

[Humble Shitpost Merchant]

Every single passenger had information that would have lead to the arrest of Hillary Clinton.

 

[Shield Breaker]

Yes, me not underestimating a country of one billion people that is moving at about seven times the pace of the US is me being a lolcow.

There is no more universally controversial opinion that I hold than that the Chinese are more organized and forward-thinking than people give them credit for. To absolutely everyone, the average Chinese person shits in a field, eats egg fermented in virgin boy urine, fries their food with recycled oil, and barbecues dogs. Giving the country any more credit than you'd give the DPRK is a sign of delusion and falling for propaganda. The Chinese are nothing more than rice niggers and factory monkeys who make your iPhone and should never be thought of in any positive light.

People get what they fucking deserve. That's all I gotta say.

There's a difference between what everyone else is saying and your portrayal of it. We don't think that they are barbarians, we just think you are wrong with how unified and powerful they are internally.

 

[Your Weird Fetish]

In the alternate universe where China is a free country they probably are kicking our ass in every way. Fortunately they're saddled with one of the dumber ways of running a nation.

 

[Negilum]

Look at China 20 years ago compared to now. When Hong Kong was returned to China in 1997, it had a GDP of $177 billion to the mainland's $950 billion. As of 2017, that number is $350b to $12,240b. Conversely, the US had a GDP of $8,609b in 1997 and had a GDP of $19,390b in 2017. What was a 9-fold gap has been effectively closed.

What was an entirely agrarian society is now the most powerful manufacturing hub in the entire world, increasingly interested in its status in the world and pushing its policies on Europeans instead of the other way around.

Why? They are a linguistically, racially, religiously homogeneous state with a strong central power system capable of flexibly planning 100 years in the future. The US is none of those things anymore. The US will be experiencing a EN/SP language divide in the next 20 years (and look at how great that worked out for Czechoslovakia, Ukraine, Yugoslavia, or any other country that has more than one official language barring the pozzed and irrelevant Switzerland), we're already mutted with most people having no idea what their roots are, and the US is experiencing sheer contempt for its own religious history. Although China is atheistic, the tenants of Confucianism and Daoism are still very strongly present in its family life and legal system and no one can take that from them.

China suffers from a wound. In its history, it was controlled for long periods of times by Mongol dynasty of Yuan. When that fell, the Chinese led Ming dynasty created an unprecedented period of peace and prosperity. After hundreds of years, that then fell to the Manchu Qing dynasty, whose royal bloodline mostly dominated the Republic of China. Mao, a proper Chinaman, led the revolution in no small part to return the reigns of government to the Han Chinese and away from foreign powers, foreign companies, and foreign peoples.

China does not allow Jews into its government, it does not allow foreigners to own more than 50% of any company operating inside its borders, it does not naturalize any foreigners, it re-educates the Muslims in western provinces and integrates them into their society by force. They have seen the decadence and the fall of the American Empire and have learned from its own history that the only people who can be trusted to govern and lead the Chinese are the Chinese.

Someone made fun of me for saying that I spend too much time on /pol/, but /pol/ would agree with you. Those STUPID RICE FARMERS still POOPING IN THE OPEN and EATING BOY EGGS and using GUTTER OIL can't poossssiibbbbllyyy usurp WHITE AMERICA, only the Jews can do that! Everyone is willfully blind to the obvious threat because they're fucking racist and not in the way the Neo-Nazis think they are.

Go 'Baidu' something like "Xi visits university" and look at how the Chairman makes personal visits to the military and AI departments and how strongly the government is focusing on an AI-piloted global military apparatus and an AI-piloted internal police state.

Time will prove me right.

I don't disagree with anything said here, the point I'm trying to make is that America still has geopolitical and military leverage over China that won't run out until the end of the century. China is geopolitcally surrounded by the U.S and their military is still greatly inferior to the Americans.

I too get really frustrated seeing well thought out points and concerns get dismissed by uselessly racist remarks. They're usually lazy and blatantly false, nothing productive comes out of "haha small peepee xD" or "bugman get squished :3."

I'm not trying to dismiss the great progress that China has made, but there are still massive gaps in this progress that the Chinese have failed to fill. A lot of Chinese power is certainly real and threatening, but lot of it is projected and has been grown inorganically. This is evident by massive swaths of China still living in pre-industrial conditions, which contrasts to the ultra-urbanized coastlines of China.

China still has a lot of catching up to do, and while they're doing it at a remarkable speed and have even surpassed us in a few areas, they're still vastly behind in other areas.

While China's growth is explosive, America should be able to contain for at least the remainder of this century.

 

[CharlesBarkley]

If China does take over that means I actully say nigger nonstop everywhere and no one can stop me.

Cant insult the han though... but I dont know of a equivalent fun to say slur

 

[Iwasamwillbe]

When did MrTickles hack Null's account?

I too read Western media talk about China.

Yet coming from this, you've somehow come to believe that Chinese state media is perfectly honest as a result.

A guy stabs a doctor operating on his father, gets national coverage, but this is somehow an endemic? Are we going to forget the US mass murders or the European trucks of peace?
CPC says to build more housing, resulting in over-enthusiastic provinces building a 'ghost city'. A strange anomaly of central planning, but lets not talk about how the US appropriates its fucking tax money.
Elderly people die in the streets (usually those whove been estranged from their family, China maintains a ritual of children-caring-for-parents), meet the US epidemic of alcoholic veterans dying waiting for the VA to cover anything.

Pure whataboutism. Nobody is forgetting or ignoring that the US and Europe has problems too just because China is shit.

HK / Taiwan have ideological independence movements backed by foreign powers. Tibet was an acquisition in the 40s no one cares about anymore. The wiggers of Xinjiang want to stop being forcefed tasty bacon and being taught Mandarin -- and that's too bad.

I mean if you're fine with the oppression of minority groups, be my guest.

You are completely full of shit regarding dialect. Maybe someone wrote an op-ed you read once 5 years ago and you've committed it to memory as true. If any dialect based discrimination goes on it's probably due to minority status as China is 90%+ Han. You know, the kind of minority oppression you're completely fine with if it were whites to niggers or spics.

Varieties of Chinese - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

Chinese, also known as Sinitic,[a] is a branch of the Sino-Tibetan language family consisting of hundreds of local language varieties that are not mutually intelligible. The differences are greater than within the Romance languages, with variation particularly strong in the more mountainous southeast.

Emphasis mine.

I also don't think @Forever Sunrise is fine with minority oppression, coming from her post history. Don't LARP as a telepath, Null.

Regarding corruption, I'd like to introduce you to literally every single person occupying a seat in the U.S. Federal Government (such as the Verizon lobbyist running the FCC), the members of congress with Israeli dual-citizenship, the military-industrial complex, the pharmaceutical industry, or the general average wealth of your typical politician being in the millions of dollars with political campaigns that can receive contributions from any number of companies and be liquidated back to personal finances.

Still not worse than China.

Your entire post is predicated on the belief that you've been told the right things and I've been told the wrong things, just like every single fucking person who reads the Washington Post and is waiting for the huge Trump meltdown any day now.

That's a really cool opinion and I hope it works out for you because I'd really like to not live under a Chinese world order. Maybe Reuters is correct, and all those economists who were right about the Trump economy all this time are also right about the Chinese economy, and that 'house of cards' will collapse like you predict it would. Maybe the proud Mutt empire will last 1000 years, ethnically diverse and under a functional democracy that doesn't already seem in imminent risk of collapse as people start talking more about secession and killing each other every day now. What a truly based world that'll be. Maybe I'll get to keep my ability to say things on the Internet and my guns. Wow. Cool. I really like this fantasy you've built. It's more more comfy than what I observe.

Well, to be blunt Null, you're acting like a doomer sped right now. All these whatabouteries you're doing for China has been done so many other times and in so many other ways for other centrally planning nations such as the USSR. And you can see how that turned out.

 

[Vince McMahon]

Null sounds like some boomers here in the 90s, when we've had jokes like "An optimist learns English, a pessimist learns Chinese and a realist learns how to fieldstrip an AK".

Is Null secretly a 50 year old Ukrainian?

 

[BONE_Buddy]

President Trump Delivers Remarks

The White House

www.youtube.com

About to start.

 

[Null]

I think a century is far too generous in all ways except, maybe, militarily.

I've said this before, but in the 2040s is when China has announced it intends to fully integrate Taiwan. If that comes down to military conflict the US will be somehow involved, and if it ends poorly for the US, that will be to the US what the Suez Canal Crisis was to the UK.

In this conflict, Artificial Intelligence will be massively important. I see in my head technology skirmishes that are started and resolved before any human is alerted to the engagement.

 

[Shield Breaker]

So can we discuss Trump's press conference here? Dear Leader is having a meltdown about the Superior Chinese Future in the other thread.

 

[Кот Бегемот]

Lmfao, this logic works both ways my dude. Their anecdotal experiences are just what you want to believe so it's cool.

I'd ante up by saying I would literally go live in China for a year, but you'd still claim I was just in a sheltered environment where I only saw what the Communists WANTED me to see!.

On an example of the Soviet Union, I can tell you that I met a whole shitload of people who lived in USSR, spoke the language and yet had little clue about the country. Actually Bernie Sanders is a good example, but I met a whole lot of Russian professors with similar experience.

USSR went to great length to create Potemkin villages and you'd shit your pants if I told you that KGB literally had tens of thousands of agents keeping close watch on every foreign tourist visiting. The expense boggles mind, yet it's a well known fact and confirmed by plenty of KGB agents who did such surveillance.

So yes, it's absolutely possible to have a whole lot of anecdotal perspective on life in China and it being completely different from other observer's point of view.

One thing that's not anedotal are hard facts about Chinese economy or the evidence (like the ghost cities) and for that, you don't really need to speak Chinese at all, you just need valid sources of stats.

 

[Vince McMahon]

TRUMP IS LIVE.

IT BEGINS.

 

[Freddy Freaker]

The Iranians are starting to explain too much. Sign of a liar.

Ukrainian plane crashes in Iran killing 176

There were many Iranian and Canadian citizens on board the Ukraine International Airlines' Boeing 737.

www.bbc.co.uk

Anyway, it's bullshit that a plane would instantly explode in midair if hit by a missile. Korean Air 902 was hit by a Soviet missile in 1978 when it wandered into Soviet airspace by accident. It that case the missile took off part of one of the wings and thr debris penetrated the fusilage. It suffered decompression and still flew on at least 40 minutes before made it down to land on a frozen lake in one piece, albeit with a couple of dead passengers from the decompression. It depends what part of the plane got hit and how high you are whether the whole thing falls apart instantly. Korean Air 007 didn't break up instantly either, even at 31,000ft.

Apparently liars taste like kabob

 

[not william stenchever]

I have another scenario for how this plane could have been shot down through sheer exceptionalism. Imagine a poorly trained air defense crew noticing a new contact pop up on their radar right over Tehran. They should know better because the transponder is on and they should know that civilian aircraft take this route all the time. But they're expecting a shooting war because their glorious leaders had just launched ze missiles and killed thousands of Americans. So they see this new contact and assume they're about to bag an F-22 and become national heroes. Opps.

 

[Your Weird Fetish]

lol 0 kills. We probably knew everything that was going to be launched before it was launching judging from how leaky Iran's command structure must be.

 

[Absolutego]

He seems to be taking this as an opportunity to make the American change in policy re: Iran very clear. His literal first words were "As long as I am President, Iran will not be allowed to have nuclear weapons".

 

[IAmNotAlpharius]

I could see this being a lie to save face or they just wanted to come across as strong to their people, but not get bitchslapped afterwards.

Iran believed to have deliberately missed U.S. forces in Iraq strikes: sources

Iran is believed to have deliberately avoided U.S. military casualties during retaliatory missile strikes on bases housing American troops in Iraq, following the U.S. killing of an Iranian general, according to U.S. and European government sources familiar with intelligence assessments. The sources,

www.yahoo.com

Iran believed to have deliberately missed U.S. forces in Iraq strikes: sources

Iran is believed to have deliberately avoided U.S. military casualties during retaliatory missile strikes on bases housing American troops in Iraq, following the U.S. killing of an Iranian general, according to U.S. and European government sources familiar with intelligence assessments. The sources,

web.archive.org

 

[Observotron]

I could see this being a lie to save face or if they just wanted to come across as strong to their people.

Iran believed to have deliberately missed U.S. forces in Iraq strikes: sources

Iran is believed to have deliberately avoided U.S. military casualties during retaliatory missile strikes on bases housing American troops in Iraq, following the U.S. killing of an Iranian general, according to U.S. and European government sources familiar with intelligence assessments. The sources,

www.yahoo.com

Tin foil hat time, but I think that's the case. Let's be real, if they wanted to kill Americans, they could. They were backed up against the wall, either do nothing and look weak to your country and neighbors, or attack the US and commit suicide. This is probably the best way they could have went about it.

The airliner incident is weird though. There's definitely going to be conspiracies for years to come about that.