{"id":391124,"date":"2018-12-31T16:17:33","date_gmt":"2018-12-31T15:17:33","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/newswire\/trump-ran-scared-to-iraq\/"},"modified":"2018-12-31T16:17:33","modified_gmt":"2018-12-31T15:17:33","slug":"trump-ran-scared-to-iraq","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/newswire\/trump-ran-scared-to-iraq\/","title":{"rendered":"Trump Ran Scared to Iraq"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Donald Trump\u2019s visit this week to US forces in Iraq has to be seen as a highly peculiar move. Following his announcement to pull troops out of Syria and Afghanistan, which caused a split with senior Pentagon figures, it seems that Trump was making a desperate bid to reassure the military establishment. Perhaps even to forestall a feared coup against his presidency.<\/p>\n

For nearly two years since his election, President Trump had not visited US troops in any active combat zone, unlike all his predecessors in the White House. His apparent indifference to overseas forces had engendered much consternation from political opponents and the media. In a recent editorial, the New York Times\u00a0admonished<\/a>: \u201cPut Down the Golf Clubs, Visit the Troops\u201d.<\/p>\n

Recall, too, the US media scorn heaped on Trump when, during his trip to France in November to mark the centennial end of World War One, he declined to pay his respects at an American war cemetery \u201cbecause it was raining\u201d.<\/p>\n


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\nThe Deep State: The Fa…<\/a><\/span><\/span>
\nMike Lofgren<\/span>
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\n<\/span>Trump is therefore not the sort of person to put himself in discomfort for others. That\u2019s why it seems all the stranger that on Christmas Night, December 25, the president and his wife Melania left the comfort of the White House, and boarded Air Force One for a 6,000-kilometer overnight flight to Iraq.<\/p>\n

The journey to Iraq was variously described in US media as a surprise and \u201cshrouded in secrecy\u201d. So secret indeed that the Iraqi government was not even informed in advance of Trump\u2019s arrival. A hastily proposed meeting with Iraqi Prime Minister Adel Abdul-Mahdi did not take place because the Iraqis were only given a couple hours notice when the US president…<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Donald Trump\u2019s visit this week to US forces in Iraq has to be seen as a highly peculiar move. Following his announcement to pull troops out of Syria and Afghanistan, which caused a split with senior Pentagon figures, it seems that Trump was making a desperate bid to reassure the military establishment. Perhaps even to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[519],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-391124","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-newswire"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/391124","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=391124"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/391124\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=391124"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=391124"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=391124"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}