January 2020

RENEE PARSONS—Existence of the email provided the perfect foil for Lynch to avoid having to make and announce the decision as if it were on her own volition. Allegedly, Comey decided to move forward with the announcement which was intended to prove that the no-prosecution decision had been made without any bias or interference. If, so the thinking goes, Lynch had made and announced the decision after her meeting with Bill, she would have been accused of corruption or having been compromised and that a deal had been cut in HRC’s favor.

PHILIP GIRALDI—That Iraq is to say the least unstable is attributable to the ill-advised U.S. invasion of 2003. The persistence of U.S. forces in the country is ostensibly to aid in the fight against ISIS, but the real reason is to serve as a check on Iranian influence in Iraq, which is a strategic demand made by Israel and not responsive to any actual American interest. Indeed, the Iraqi government is probably closer politically to Tehran than to Washington, though the neocon line that the country is dominated by the Iranians is far from true.

There is a joke going around Italy these days, after the latest Iranian developments: Italy doesn’t really need a foreign minister, since the position is already taken by a guy named Mike Pompeo, whose origins are, after all, Italian. Pompeo seemingly spent two days on the phone doing his best to inform European allies of what happened, but didn’t have time for a call to his Italian counterpart. Seriously, why bother?