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Last week, after a U.S. drone strike killed the leader of Iran's Kud's force, Qasem Soleimani,

the State Department held a special briefing for reporters, explaining what exactly had just happened.

The briefing was private. There weren't any cameras. Administration officials weren't identified by name.

But a transcript at the meeting was eventually posted online. These officials, they argued that if they hadn't killed Soleimani, hundreds of Americans

would be dead, eventually. They said killing Soleimani meant they were speaking in a language the

Iranian regime understands. Eventually, these officials, they seemed to get frustrated. One senior

State Department official said, Jesus, do we have to explain why we do

these things? The room laughed, but the reporter kept pushing. They said, yes, you do. Another official

weighed in, said, you're going to have to talk to the lawyers.

Yeah, it's pretty remarkable.

Ona Hathaway used to be one of those lawyers.

I mean, what's amazing to me is like in the Obama administration, everything was so carefully vetted.

ONA teaches at Yale now.

So there's so many things that have gone wrong here.

One of them is that they didn't bother to notify Congress in advance.

But afterwards, they just can't get their story straight.

One national security advisor has said that because Soleimani was killed inside Iraq,

he was fair game.

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