5 Reasons We’ve Been Given for the Killing of Qassem Soleimani

US helicopters attacked a convoy carrying Qassim Soleimani Thursday.Abaca via ZUMA

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Here are the explanations so far for why we had to kill Qassim Soleimani:

Story #1: He was planning “imminent strikes” on American targets and we had to stop him.

Story #2: But we don’t know when or where.

Story #3: Wait, he was planning to bomb our embassy in Baghdad.

Story #4: Well, really, we killed him as revenge for the demonstration against our embassy in Baghdad.

Story #5: Hold on. He was planning to bomb four American embassies.

By no means do I think this covers all the explanations we’ve gotten. These are just the ones I remember off the top of my head. The last two are from President Trump himself.

It’s insane. And so far, the Trumpies have refused to provide even the slightest bit of evidence to back this up, even to the Gang of Eight in Congress.

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GREAT JOURNALISM, SLOW FUNDRAISING

Our team has been on fire lately—publishing sweeping, one-of-a-kind investigations, ambitious, groundbreaking projects, and even releasing “the holy shit documentary of the year.” And that’s on top of protecting free and fair elections and standing up to bullies and BS when others in the media don’t.

Yet, we just came up pretty short on our first big fundraising campaign since Mother Jones and the Center for Investigative Reporting joined forces.

So, two things:

1) If you value the journalism we do but haven’t pitched in over the last few months, please consider doing so now—we urgently need a lot of help to make up for lost ground.

2) If you’re not ready to donate but you’re interested enough in our work to be reading this, please consider signing up for our free Mother Jones Daily newsletter to get to know us and our reporting better. Maybe once you do, you’ll see it’s something worth supporting.

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