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The Pentagon’s top leadership on Monday defended the intelligence that drove the US military to carry out the strike that killed Iran’s Gen. Qasem Soleimani.
They denied reports that the intelligence was “thin” and stressed that very few people in government have seen it.
“We know his history. Importantly we knew his future. I’m not going to go into the details of that and I know that a lot of people are out there. I’ve seen words like, 'Oh the intelligence is razor thin.' Very very few people saw that intelligence. He and I saw that intelligence,” Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Mark Milley told reporters at the Pentagon while speaking alongside Secretary of Defense Mark Esper.
“And I will be happy when the appropriate time comes and in front of the proper committees and anybody else, through history and every — I will stand by the intelligence I saw, that it was compelling, it was imminent, and it was very, very clear in scale, scope. Did it exactly say who, what, when, where? No, but he was planning, coordinating and synchronizing significant combat operations against US military forces in the region and it was imminent,” Milley said.
“We’re not going to go further than that because of the sources and methods and I know people say well you’re hiding behind it and you lie and all that. That’s not true, I know what I saw and I think I said publicly previously and I will reiterate it, that we, those of us who are involved in the decision making of that, we would have been culpably negligent to the American people had we not made the decision we made,” he added.