I want you to look at the picture above very carefully.  These young women are all former members of the American military.  They all have another thing in common. They are all amputees.  Several are multiple amputees.  They received these horrific injuries because of the actions put in place by one man.  His name is Qassem Soleimani.

The formed penetrator (EFP), a weapon of Iranian engineering, made possible the destruction of many armored vehicles which formerly protected the U.S. and allied military personnel who rode in them.  Those brave soldiers and marines who weren’t killed in the explosion were catastrophically injured.  These devices have been placed all over Middle-Eastern battlefields after being supplied to the local insurgents by the Iranians.  Soleimani’s Quds Force provided EFP training and logistics to militants in Iraq, Afghanistan and Syria, among other locations.   The high number of amputations throughout the various wars were the direct result of the weapons.

The elimination of Qassem Soleimani by missiles fired by a Predator Drone is being portrayed as “murder” by some commentators from the national media.  He is being called a highly respected Iranian leader who was beloved by his troops.  Perhaps he was, but then Adolph Hitler was beloved by the Nazi S.S. fanatics, wasn’t he?

From the time in 1979 when the Iranian Islamic Republic tacitly declared war on the United States by allowing the takeover of our embassy in Tehran and the holding of its occupants as hostages for 444 days, we have indeed been at war with that rogue nation.  Because of a perceived dependence on Middle East oil, six Presidential administrations, from Carter to Obama, have failed to act when Iranian aggression was plain for all to see.  Iran, along with North Korea, are the worst supporters of terrorism on the planet.  However, in President Trump, they may have finally met their match.  We are energy independent.  We no longer need their oil, and could squash them like a cockroach if we chose to do so.

We should make that plain to the world at large.  We should loudly and publicly state our support for the Iranian people who want to throw off the yoke of theocratic oppression imposed on them by the Iranian Mullahs.  We should make it plain to Russia and China that we will not allow the rogue Iranian regime to export terror any longer, threatening our citizens in the process.  We should warn them in no uncertain terms, but in private, not to align themselves with Iran.  Finally, as I stated in a previous post, we should withdraw all but a very small number of intelligence gathering Special Operations personnel from the region, but give them the maximum amount of protection available.  Tell any countries in the Middle East that we will support them logistically as long as it is our interests to do so, but we will not spend one more drop of blood or one penny of treasure defending counties who are unwilling to defend themselves.  Look at the picture again.  There is a cost for doing nothing. These young women, and thousands of other American military personnel, are visible proof of that.