Like many of her CNN colleagues, CNN International and PBS host Christane Amanpour didn’t exactly have jubilant reactions Friday morning to the news that Iranian military leader and terrorist Qasem Soleimani was killed in a U.S. airstrike.
Instead, Amanpour did everything she could to rhetorically dismiss, question, and undercut the operation, taking shots at the U.S., hailing the French of possessing foreign policy chops, and tossing aside the killing of Osama bin Laden as inconsequential because bin Laden “was a forgotten, you know, nothingburger.”
Amanpour first joined the parade of pro-Iranian regime voices with a hit on New Day, arguing the Trump administration tragically doesn’t have a plan and that Iranians will “draw some” American “blood in response” because he was “so well known” and “beloved.” Yuck.
Amanpour also seemed to criticize the decision because Soleimani was someone who helped lead Islamic forces in Iraq to stop ISIS.
Ah, so the “blood of many Americans” weighs out to what he did with ISIS?
She then had the bizarre audacity to praise the French as foreign policy sages and dismiss the successful U.S. raids that killed bin Laden and ISIS leader Abu Bakar al-Baghdadi (click “expand”):
Well, you know, you heard Secretary Pompeo say to John that the French are wrong. I mean, he categorically said that. Remember that some — you know, on the eve of the Iraq War — the U.S. invasion of Iraq in March of 2003, then-President Chirac said the United States was going to open a can of worms and France did not go along with this action and wanted more time to figure out what exactly was the intelligence with the weapons of mass destruction in Iraq and, President Chirac was proved right. I think the French have a huge history in that region; so do the British. So do many other people who not only have a history and a diplomatic history but also have people and personnel in the region, so that is going to be, again, something to watch because as everybody has said, it's unlikely that Iran would take on the United States in any effort at symmetrical warfare.
It's very, very unlikely. It hasn't happened in the past, it's unlikely to happen now, but the asymmetrical — the ability to lash out in many parts of that region is clear and present and it is the reason — or at least one of the main reasons why successive U.S. presidents, from George W. Bush to Barack Obama, and up until now, President Obama have not — sorry, President Trump — have not taken this massive escalatory step and remember, Qasem Soleimani was at the height of his power when he was taken out, unlike Osama bin Laden, who was a forgotten, you know, nothingburger sort of hiding in a, you know, villa in Pakistan, but, it's not the person you take out, it's what they leave behind, and the tentacles, and who comes next. Al-Qaeda terrorism did not end with the sidelining of Osama bin Laden. ISIS has not ended with the killing of al-Baghdadi. So if you're trying to end whatever is happening, this is a major escalation and we need to see what the plan is. Expand
This being Jeffrey Zucker’s CNN in which division and anti-Trump views are almost a pre-requisite for being a guest, Amanpour came back just over three hours later on At This Hour.
Speaking to Wolf Blitzer, Amanpour began with quite the understatement, asserting that on “this side of the pond away from where you are, the reaction is very different than it is in the United States where a huge amount of defense of this action is being weighed.”
She continued pouring on the positive sentiments, boasting that, in Iran, “he was such a legendary figure, raised not only in terms of what he did, but mythologically, always spoken of by name by the Americans, weirdly, Qasem Soleimani suddenly became sort of a mythical figurine sort of the way even the United States was talking about him.”
Describing the Trump administration’s approach, Amanpour condemned it as a “tit for cat, cat and mouse situation” since the U.S. left the Iran nuclear deal in favor of “this strategy of maximum pressure” that “it didn't work in the way that the U.S. wanted it to work.”
She concluded by boasting that, in death, the U.S. could have achieved one of Soleimani’s top goals by killing him, which would be Iraq ordering “U.S. forces out of Iraq.”
https://www.newsbusters.org/blogs/nb/curtis-houck/2020/01/03/watch-cnns-amanpour-struggle-soleimani-news-bashes-bin-laden-raid
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