Continuing his four-year improv stint in Washington, stand-up artist Donald Trump claimed last week that “some of our great generals… just seem to feel that” the Beirut port explosion “was a bomb of some kind.”
No American generals great or small have come forward to state such a feeling, let alone any evidence that the August 4 explosion of the stateless ammonium nitrate stockpile in Beirut resulted from any military or terrorist attack. The United States military has no such evidence.
But here in the United States, where we have thousands of depots of ammonium nitrate and other hazardous chemicals, we do have evidence that Donald Trump is making it harder for us to prevent similar devastating explosions, like those in Texas in 1947 and 2013, by blocking safety regulations:
WESTERVELT: In 2013, then-President Obama ordered federal agencies to get together and come up with proposals to bring the handling and storage of AN into the 21st century. OSHA started the lengthy process to change its safety management standards for dangerous chemicals, including AN. Environmental groups didn’t think the proposed options went far enough. Industry said they went too far. But that reform process, former OSHA administrator [David] Michaels notes, came to a screeching halt under the Trump administration.
MICHAELS: We said this is important. We asked all of our stakeholders to weigh in. And of course, all those activities were immediately shelved by President Trump. And so any efforts to safeguard communities and workers in the event of an ammonium nitrate explosion simply stopped [Eric Westervelt, “U.S. Is at Risk of Beirut-Like Explosion, Experts Warn,” NPR: All Things Considered, 2020.08.12].
Bad guys do make things go boom. But the bad guys aren’t always foreign armies and terrorists. Sometimes the bad guys are incompetent and uncaring government officials who put profit over people.
Donald Trump’s careless armchair speculation about bombs damages the reputation of the White House and the United States as a whole in international affairs, reducing our international security:
“I would advise against listening to Donald Trump at the best of times, let alone the worst,” Tom Fletcher, a former British ambassador to Lebanon, said.
“You can’t show up unprepared for the Middle East. Careless messaging from the White House has consequences, even when no one takes the tweeter seriously. I hope future American presidents will try to help put out fires in the region, not fan them” [Julian Borger, “Alarm at Trump’s Unsubstantiated Claim That Beirut Blast Was an ‘Attack’,” UK Guardian, 2020.08.05].
Trump’s similarly thoughtless destruction of industrial regulations puts the safety of all Americans at risk.
This is a pretty pathetic post. Seems like you took one comment and tried to make it into some total negative against the President. Sad. I expect more from you.
Interesting that it’s the truth though. If we ever have one of these dumps blow up, you can bet the farm that trump will blame Iran just like he tried to blame Iran through Hezbollah in Lebanon. trump is trying his arse off to get us into a shooting war with Iran before the election, worked for W. So if one of these dumps goes off, don’t be surprised who gets the blame. Remember Oklahoma City and how Clinton tried to put the blame on Mid East terrorists before the realization that one of our own could commit such a mass murder…and a White Christian too boot! Booyah!
That’s a huge grasp there. And no he’s not, that’s just asinine and without ANY merit. As CNN commonly says, that’s a “baseless” statement.
White yes. Christian? Hell naw.
A grasp? Nope, facts. Here is another one
“Timothy McVeigh, meet Anders Behring Breivik.
Those two jihadists—two right-wing reactionaries, two terrorists, two anti-government white supremacists, two Christians—have a lot in common, down to the way the massacres they carried out were first mistaken for the work of Islamists by an American press rich in zealotry of its own. And they have a lot more in common with the fundamentalist politicians and ideologues among us who pretend to have nothing to do with the demons they inspire.” https://flaglerlive.com/25667/pt-mcveigh-breivik/
Let’s be clear. “If” they were actually Christian they wouldn’t have killed people. There are MANY people who say they are something that are in fact not.
My guess is Israel is involved in the blast. They have bombed some in Iran ( not with jets) and Lebanon, earlier, I believe.
Your “guess?” Wow, that’s rich. I await some anti-semetic statements from you next. No proof of that at all. It was a disaster waiting to happen. Get real.
This report agrees with you mfi
“Israel was “clearly” responsible for the explosion that shattered Beirut on August 4, killing more than 170 people, wounding thousands and destroying swaths of the city, Lebanese former interior minister Nohad Machnouk told a press conference Wednesday.
“This operation in Beirut was carried out by Israel in a clear and explicit manner,” Machnouk said, adding: “It is clear we are looking at a crime against humanity, and therefore no one dares to claim responsibility for it.” https://asiatimes.com/2020/08/lebanon-ex-interior-minister-israel-blew-up-port/
This is a joke right? Posting this “website” is a joke right?
That’s not a website, it’s a reliable news site.
Media fact check https://mediabiasfactcheck.com/asia-times/
Here is your source Steve, Fox https://mediabiasfactcheck.com/fox-news/
Lotsa “Pants on Fires” for fake noize. Great job jabbing Steve, Jerry.
Couple of left jabs to the noggin and the a straight load of truth to the kisser,
Media Bias/Fact Check is a website founded in 2015 by editor Dave Van Zandt. The website has been described as an amateur effort to rate news media sources based on factual accuracy and political bias.
I see no American news organizations with a similar story. Plus that Asiatimes piece has no proof, facts, or anything showing Israel did it…just conjecture. Imagine that.
Proof is in the pudding. Soon as there is factual information that Israel did that I’ll concede.
Steve – when did you found your counter-fact checking organization? What’s it called? causestevesaysso.net?
Here is another article
“BEIRUT — Military aircraft were heard, and in some cases seen, flying in the sky in the moments before the apocalyptic Beirut explosion, war-hardened residents of the Lebanese capital told Asia Times this week.”https://asiatimes.com/2020/08/planes-heard-seen-in-skies-of-beirut-before-blast/
This is why there needs to be independent sources reviewing what happened. But don’t discount the fact that there are those powers who want to see Lebanon as a failed state to swoop in and pick the carcass clean of its wealth in real estate alone. As far as those 4 planes that were known on the radar screens as well as being seen and heard, why were they there at that particular time? The generals may not have told trump anything, but the intelligence brief may have told him plenty. Never discount a good way to start a conflict at election time.
It is true that Cadet Bone Spurs sees war as a way to save his sorry a$$, win the election and thus keep himself, his family, half the GOP in the Senate and his entire administration out of prison. Moscow Mitch is eager to help bring the shooting about, since he’s neck deep in the crooked slop, even more than the rest of Pootie’s Senators.
Looks like the Beirut bombing was all about oil for Israel. Go figure. How many lives and how much blood has to be spilled for this toxic disgust.
“But the major concession on the table is Hezbollah’s long-sought blessing for the demarcation of Lebanon’s maritime boundary with Israel, an accord which would establish an official border and represent a step toward normalized relations.
On August 13, Israel announced it had made peace with the United Arab Emirates, the first such deal with an Arab state in a quarter-century and a potential indicator of where the Arabian Peninsula is heading.
In a clear olive branch, Aoun, just three days after the blast, told Trump by phone he hoped the US could help resolve the Israel sea boundary issue, once and for all.” https://asiatimes.com/2020/08/noose-tightens-on-hezbollah-in-post-blast-lebanon/