Sen. Mike Lee rails against a classified briefing on Iran: "the worst briefing I've seen, at least on a military issue."
Mike Lee declared in a heated press conference Wednesday afternoon that national security officials had just delivered the "worst military briefing" he had ever seen on Capitol Hill, even claiming that one official had warned during the "lame" and "insane" meeting that Congress shouldn't debate whether additional military action against Iran would be appropriate.
Democrats piled on, with Virginia Democratic Rep. Gerald E. Connolly calling the briefing "sophomoric and utterly unconvincing." Minnesota Democratic Rep. Ilhan Omar, for her part, asserted that she has been "stricken with PTSD" due to recent developments and condemned President Trump's new sanctions against Iran as "economic warfare." (Omar and her family fled war-torn Somalia and spent years in a refugee camp.) Rep. Jim Banks, R-Ind., called her comments "a disgrace and offensive to our nation’s veterans who really do have PTSD," prompting Omar to respond, "I survived war as a child and deal with post-traumatic stress disorder—much like many who have served or lived through war. It’s shameful that you as a member of Congress would erase the PTSD of survivors."
Lee says this was the worst briefing he’s ever seen on military matters in the nine years he’s been a Senator. He then noted what distressed him so much about the briefing:
“What I found so distressing about that briefing was that one of the messages we received from the briefers was, do not debate, do not discuss the issue of appropriateness of further military intervention against Iran. And that if you do you’ll be emboldening Iran. The implication being that we would somehow be making America less safe by having a debate or a discussion about the appropriateness of further military involvement against the government of Iran.”
Lee says this is both insulting and demeaning to the office that these Senators hold and to the Constitution. He said that “it is not acceptable for officials within the executive branch of government…to come in and tell us that we can’t debate and discuss the appropriateness of military intervention against Iran. It’s un-American. It’s unconstitutional and it’s wrong.”
Lee elaborates more when answering questions about it from the media, noting that the breifers wouldn’t even get into the sensitive areas of the intelligence even though they were in a SCIF (top-secret room where no electronic devices allowed):
Tags: Mike Lee
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