GOP Sen. Tom Cotton praises Trump for military strike that killed ‘sadistic mastermind’ Soleimani, saying soldiers in Baghdad saw him as an ‘imminent threat’ and he saw evidence that the Iranian general was plotting ‘something large and dangerous’
- Republican Arkansas Sen. Tom Cotton praised Donald Trump’s military strike that killed Iranian Gen. Qassem Soleimani on January 3
- Cotton, a war veteran, slammed Soleimani as a ‘sadistic mastermind’
- He said he saw intelligence that proved Soleimani was plotting something ‘large and dangerous’ to hit America hard
- ‘The question of whether an attack is imminent or not looks very different if you’re a solider sitting in Iraq or if you’re a senator in Washington DC,’ he said
- He condemned Democrats who objected to the Soleimani strike
Republican Arkansas Sen. Tom Cotton praised Donald Trump’s military strike that killed Iranian Gen. Qassem Soleimani, calling him a ‘sadistic mastermind’ who was plotting an imminent attack on the US.
Cotton, a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee and Iraq and Afghanistan veteran, said he saw firsthand intelligence that proved Soleimani was plotting ‘something large and very dangerous’ in the future.
‘There is no doubt. I have seen the intelligence that he was plotting something large, something very dangerous, whether it took place in a matter of weeks or a matter of days,’ Cotton said in a Sunday interview on Fox’s Life, Liberty & Levin.
Republican Arkansas Sen. Tom Cotton praised Donald Trump’s military strike that killed Iranian Gen. Qassem Soleimani on January 3, saying he’s seen intelligence that proves Soleimani was plotting ‘something large and dangerous’ in an interview with Fox’s Life, Liberty & Levin
Cotton then slammed Democrats for objecting to Trump’s attack on the 62-year-old general.
‘The question of whether an attack is imminent or not, I got to say it looks very different if you’re a solider sitting in Iraq or if you’re a senator sitting behind armed guards in Washington DC,’ he said.
‘So I was very disappointed in all my Democratic colleagues in the Senate over the last few weeks… because if you got a chance to take a mastermind like Qassem Soleimani off the battlefield, you take it, and I commend the president for doing so. We should have done it a long time ago,’ he added.
Cotton described Soleimani’s hand in the Middle East, saying he inflicted suffering in every country in the region.
‘You mentioned in Syria, he’s largely responsible for Bashar al-Assad still being in power and killing hundreds and thousands of Syrians. Just at the end of last year more than a thousand Iranians were killed by their own security forces as they protested against their government, Qassem Soleimani was responsible for those as well,’ he said.
‘The question of whether an attack is imminent or not, I got to say it looks very different if you’re a solider sitting in Iraq or if you’re a senator sitting behind armed guards in Washington DC,’ Cotton said. General Qassem Soleimani pictured above
The image shows one of the smoldering vehicles struck in a US drone strike that killed General Qassem Soleimani on January 3 at the Baghdad International Airport
Iranian Revolution supreme leader Ali Khamenei (center) and President Hassan Rouhani (2nd from L) pictured at the funeral of General Qassem Soleimani
The US killed General Soleimani in a drone strike on January 3, 2020 after he landed in Baghdad.
The attack triggered a week of escalating military action between the US and Iran.
Soleimani was known as a 62-year-old high-flying general and leader of the Quds Force of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps who was behind proxy wars in Iraq, Syria, Lebanon and Yemen.
He was one of the most ruthless commanders in the region who for years worked in the shadows but emerged in the spotlight following the Arab Spring and the war with the Islamic State. He’s seen as the mastermind behind Iran’s fight for regional dominance.