Army won't investigate Vindman over impeachment testimony, top leader says
Vindman was ousted from his position on the NSC last week after the Senate acquitted Trump.
Former National Security Council Director for European Affairs Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman. | Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images
By JACQUELINE FELDSCHER 02/14/2020 02:04 PM EST
The Army will not investigate Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman, the former National Security Council staffer who testified in the president’s impeachment investigation, the service’s top civilian said Friday.
Army Secretary Ryan McCarthy made the announcement at an event just days after President Donald Trump said he imagined the military would “take a look at” whether Vindman should face disciplinary action for the “horrible things” he told House investigators about the president’s phone call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky last July.
Vindman was ousted from his position on the NSC last week after the Senate acquitted Trump. Vindman’s lawyer said the move amounted to retribution.
McCarthy on Friday downplayed Vindman’s return to the Army, saying he simply returned to the service a few months earlier than planned and would have a “bridging assignment” for a couple of months in the Army’s headquarters office in Washington.
“Then he will be heading to a senior service college this summer. There’s no investigation into him,” McCarthy said at a National Press Club luncheon.
“It turned out that what he reported was very different [than what occurred],” Trump added. “And also when you look at the person he reports to, said horrible things, avoided the chain of command, leaked, did a lot of bad things. And so we sent him on his way to a much different location, and the military can handle him anyway they want.”
'Repeated violations': Iraqi president condemns US air strikes
"Top Democrat blasts Trump's 'false' justification for Soleimani killing "As Tensions With Iran Escalated, Trump Opted for Most Extreme Measure "The Latest: Iraq parliament votes to expel US military"""
Iraqi army also denounces overnight attacks killing six, including a civilian, and calls them violation of sovereignty.
14 Mar 2020
An Iraqi civilian airport under construction in Karbala after being hit in a US air raid [Alaa al-Marjani/Reuters]
Iraq has condemned overnight US air strikes on Friday, with its military saying they killed six people and describing them as violation of sovereignty and a targeted aggression against the nation's regular armed forces.
President Barham Salih said such "repeated violations" could cause Iraq to unravel into a failed state and revive the Islamic State of Iraq and Levant (ISIL, also known as ISIS) group.
Iraq's security problems will be solved by supporting its government, not turning it into a battlefield for a proxy war, Salih said, warning that ISIL might seize on any chaos.
"The repeated violations the state is being subjected to are a dangerous and deliberate weakening of its abilities especially at a time when Iraq faces unprecedented challenges on political, economic, financial, security, and health fronts," he said.
Meanwhile, Iraq's foreign minister summoned the ambassadors of the United States and United Kingdom over the deadly overnight air raids against Iraqi military positions.
"The foreign minister held an emergency meeting in which the ministry's undersecretaries, advisors and official spokesman discussed the measures regarding the recent American aggression. He has ordered the summoning of the United States and British ambassadors to Baghdad," a spokesman said in a statement.
It came after Iraq's military said at least one civilian and five security personnel were killed in the US raids, which it denounced as a violation of sovereignty and a targeted aggression against Iraq's armed forces.
The civilian killed in the overnight attack was a cook working at an airport under construction in Karbala, the military said in a statement. The death toll included three soldiers and two policemen, while four soldiers, two policemen, one civilian and five militiamen were wounded, it said.
A US official told The Associated Press news agency that the raids were a joint operation with the British.
Reporting from Baghdad, Al Jazeera's Simona Foltyn said there had been "widespread condemnation" of the attacks that targeted different southern positions belonging to the Popular Mobilisation Forces, an umbrella organisation of several armed militias, with the latest incident likely to once again ignite calls in Iraq for the expulsion of US troops.
Citing the military's statement, Foltyn said the "fatalities suggest that these air strikes were not as precise as the US said that they were, and this is rather embarrassing for the US because the Iraqi army and police are its partners under the coalition to fight ISIL.
"Essentially, rather than deterring Kataib Hezbollah and other Iranian-linked groups from conducting further attacks on US servicemen, the US in fact ended up further rupturing the relationship between its Iraqi partners and its presence here in Iraq."
Members of Iraqi security forces inspect the damage at the airport hit by US air strikes in Karbala [Alaa al-Marjani/Reuters]
Washington had blamed Kataib Hezbollah for an attack in December that killed a US contractor, leading to a cycle of tit-for-tat confrontations that culminated in the January 3 US assassination of top Iranian general Qassem Soleimani on January 3. Five days later, a retaliatory Iranian missile attack on two bases in Iraq housing US troops left more than 100 US troops with brain injuries but caused no fatalities.
Iran on Friday warned US President Donald Trump against taking "dangerous actions" after the overnight air raids.
"The United States cannot blame others ... for the consequences of its illegal presence in Iraq and the nation's reaction to the assassination and killing of Iraqi commanders and fighters," foreign ministry spokesman Abbas Mousavi said.
"Instead of dangerous actions and baseless accusations, Mr Trump should reconsider the presence and behaviour of his troops in the area," he added.
The Pentagon said late on Thursday that its "strikes" had targeted Kataib Hezbollah that housed weapons used to target US and coalition troops," it said.
Damage at the civilian airport under construction hit by US air strikes in Kerbala [Alaa al-Marjani/Reuters]
Iraq base attack: Coalition denies strike on Iran-backed fighters in Syria
12 March 2020
A number of Shia militias in Iraq receive weapons, training and financing from Iran AFP
A US-led coalition has denied carrying out air strikes on Iran-backed Iraqi Shia militiamen in eastern Syria after a deadly attack on its troops in Iraq.
A monitoring group reported that bases belonging to the paramilitary Popular Mobilisation force were hit on Wednesday night, killing 26 people.
Earlier, a rocket attack on the Camp Taji military base in Iraq killed two American troops and a British soldier.
A US commander said Shia militia groups were likely to have fired the rockets.
"While we are still investigating the attack, I will note that the Iranian proxy group Kataib Hezbollah is the only group known to have previously conducted an indirect fire attack of this scale against US and coalition forces in Iraq," Central Command chief Gen Kenneth McKenzie told a Senate committee.
[...]
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR) reported that three aircraft targeted Popular Mobilisation camps in the al-Hassian area and the Imam Ali military base, which is believed to have been built by Iran.
The UK-based monitoring group said all of those killed in the strikes were Iraqis, and that weapons and ammunition stores were also destroyed.
It was not clear who carried out the strikes. The coalition has conducted raids on Islamic State (IS) militants in Syria since 2014, while Israel has sought to counter what it calls Iran's "military entrenchment" there.
Iranian forces and Iraqi Shia militias are operating in Syria to support forces loyal to President Bashar al-Assad in the country's civil war.
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