(LifeSiteNews) — Due to a decades-long desire by Israeli leaders and U.S. neoconservatives to initiate war with Iran, American troops were left in a vulnerable position “as bait,” “to be killed” in order to create a pretense for war, according to Tucker Carlson and his guest, Washington state congressional candidate Joe Kent.
Kent’s campaign website states he is a veteran of U.S. Special Forces with experience both as a CIA field operative and policy adviser to former President Donald Trump.
“We left our troops in these vulnerable locations,” the former Green Beret assessed. “By leaving our troops in these locations (essentially) undefended… we left them there as bait because so many people in Washington, D.C., want to go to war with Iran.”
Ep. 69 War with Iran? Yes. We’re already in it. Joe Kent did 11 combat tours in the U.S. Army. His wife Shannon was killed serving in Syria. Here’s his informed view of what that war will mean. pic.twitter.com/5yNCDc37Gb
— Tucker Carlson (@TuckerCarlson) January 29, 2024
Kent was lamenting the drone attack against a small U.S. military outpost near the border of Jordan and Syria this past weekend which reportedly left three American soldiers dead and over 40 wounded.
While government authorities in Jordan initially claimed the attack happened on the Syrian side of the border, they later appeared to confirm it was indeed in Jordan condemning the attack “on the border with Syria.” The outpost, called Tower 22, supports the illegal U.S. military occupation in northeastern Syria.
Noting that the American troops stationed in these dangerous locations have been attacked, “at least 150 times since the October 7th incident began,” the combat veteran affirmed U.S. authorities could anticipate this attack, and indeed, such deaths were “an inevitable conclusion.”
Kent, who’s first wife was killed in the line of duty in Syria, proposed that U.S. officials were not only working to provoke war with Iran by leaving their service personnel vulnerable to strikes from Shia militias, but they were actually funding and equipping such militias indirectly through American support for the government of Iraq.
“The government of Iraq is completely controlled by Iran,” he explained. “We spend billions of dollars every single year funding, arming, training, and equipping the Iraqi government so they can turn around and support the exact same militias that just killed our troops.”
“So if you look at just the full scope of the way that we have arranged ourselves in the Middle East, who we’re supporting and where our troops are, there’s no logical conclusion other than the fact that we have left them there as bait, to be killed by Iranians at the time and place of their choosing, so that we can continue to escalate towards a conflict with Iran,” the candidate concluded.
Carlson agreed, calling it “demonstrably true” that “American policymakers have left American citizens in these countries in order to be killed so they can justify killing more American citizens in a broader war against a very well-armed country, Iran.”
On Monday, Pentagon spokesperson Sabrina Singh said Iran “bears responsibility” for the attack since they “arm and equip and fund these groups,” but also admitted the U.S. has no evidence the Iranian government was directly involved.
The New York Times reported on January 21 that the Biden administration was discussing how to respond to these many militia attacks, warning that should American troops be killed, this is a “red line” that would likely precipitate the U.S. striking Iran directly that could “escalate into a full-fledged war.”
In a Monday interview of former CIA officer Ray McGovern, Judge Andrew Napolitano asked, “Is it probable that this was a false flag either by the Israelis or the Americans or some entity wanting to start a war there and make it look like someone else’s fault?”
In the past, McGovern has documented how such false flags have been used to trick the public into accepting wars desired by different factions, including neoconservatives and other regional actors. In 2013, for example, President Barack Obama issued his own “red line” warning indicating that if Syrian president Bashar al-Assad used chemical weapons against American-supported rebels trying to topple his government, the U.S. would have to intervene directly.
On August 21, 2013, a sarin nerve-gas attack happened in Ghouta, a suburb of Damascus, killing hundreds of people, with the media poised and ready to blame Assad’s Syrian government troops for the attack and call for American bombing reprisals. Yet, according to McGovern, “accumulating evidence” offered persuasive proof that the American-backed rebels, who would benefit from such bombings, bore responsibility for the deadly attack.
In responding to Napolitano, McGovern emphasized the importance of referring to the principle of Cui bono?, which translated asks, “to whom is it a benefit?” Relying on the fact that crimes are often committed by those who benefit from their consequences, this principle can propose reasonable suspects.
Given the “red line” warning in the New York Times, McGovern said he would give it a “50/50 chance” that the attack was a false flag, stating he believes the Israelis would be capable of resorting to such an assault with support from American neocons “who see no difference between the interests of Israel” and those of the United States, “and the interest of Israel is paramount right now.”
Iran has strongly denied any involvement in the drone attack or any of the other attacks, with Foreign Ministry spokesman Nasser Kanaani stating these resistance militias were targeting U.S. troops due to the American backing of Israel’s current massacre of tens of thousands of civilians in Gaza.
“As we have clearly stated before, the resistance groups in the region are responding [to] the war crimes and genocide of the child-killing Zionist regime and… they do not take orders from the Islamic Republic of Iran,” he said Monday. “These groups decide and act based on their own principles and priorities as well as the interests of their country and people.”
READ: UN’s top court rules genocide charge against Israel is ‘plausible’
For decades, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has pushed for the United States to militarily engage or even go to war against Iran, “crying wolf” since 1992 with exaggerated “lies” that the Persian nation has intended to build a nuclear weapon, even in the face of direct contradiction from U.S. intelligence agencies. He successfully utilized the same tactics in promoting the U.S. invasion of Iraq.
Since the October 7 Hamas attack, Netanyahu’s government along with scores of western neoconservatives and media pundits have asserted that Iran both supported and directed the attack, yet the U.S. government has yet to present evidence demonstrating Tehran’s involvement.
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