On Tuesday’s broadcast of CNN’s “Situation Room,” Sen. Tammy Duckworth (D-IL) responded to a question on if Iran should be punished for the recent deaths of American troops by declaring that “the blame for those 18 servicemembers’ deaths lays at the feet of the president of the United States.”
Co-host Wolf Blitzer asked, “As someone who has fought and sacrificed so much for our country during your time serving with the U.S. military in Iraq, how are you reflecting on this loss of American life, and should the U.S. punish Iran right now for those deaths, as President Trump is suggesting?”
Duckworth answered, “Well, first and foremost, Trump is the one who started this war. Trump is the one who started this war without any actual plan for how he was going to execute the mission. So, the blame for those 18 servicemembers’ deaths lays at the feet of the president of the United States. It sits on the Resolute Desk in front of him, in that gilded Marie Antoinette of an Oval Office that he’s turned it into. He brags that he doesn’t think that Americans’ financial situations are important to him as he tries to hand Iran hundreds of billions of dollars, and he hasn’t taken the responsibility for the death of those servicemembers. Look, our servicemen and women are the most important national treasure we have in this nation, and before we choose to ask them to sacrifice on behalf of each and every one of us, we need to be sure that we know what we’re doing when we start a war. When we send them into war, we better have a plan, we better know how we’re going to execute it, and we better know what the conditions are for the end of the mission. Trump has not done any of that. And he also appointed the most incompetent secretary of defense in our nation’s history, who, all he seems to be worried about is testosterone levels in our troops, instead of making sure that he actually has a plan to execute this mission in Iran and ending it before even more Americans get killed, before our economy craters even further, and before we alienate even more allies and set Iran up to have nuclear weapons. This whole thing has been an absolute disaster, and it shows what happens when you have an incompetent commander-in-chief who’s being assisted by an incompetent secretary of defense.”
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