Last Spring, Senator Tom Udall introduced an amendment to the defense appropriation bill that would have prevented Trump from taking any military action against Iran or its leaders without congressional approval.  McConnell poo-pood it and all but 4 Repubs voted against it.  McConnell even said that Trump had assured him he had no intention of taking action against Iran.

How wrong he was, and now Trump is taking us UNILATERALLY into a war with no congressional oversight.  Huge mistake.

In a pre-dawn raid, the US just conducted a missile strike at the airport in Baghdad that killed General Qassem Soleimani, the head of Iran’s elite Quds force and the head of the Iraqi militia, Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis.  Internatonal crude prices are up sharply in the last hour on rumors of war with Iran.

Strap in.  Trump’s trying to start a war with Iran to distract from his problems at home.

We all know that John Bolton hates everyone and everything Iranian.  He desperately tried to get GWB to bomb Tehran back to the stone age, but still licking his wounds from his folly in Iraq, even HE wasn’t stupid enough to fall for Bolton’s bullshit on Iran.

Well, Bolton’s got a president now who is remarkably more stupid that GWB, so it’s Deja Vu all over again, and this time Trump IS stupid enough to go along with him.  Even while he denies he’s planning on sending in 120,000 troops into the Middle East, the defense department is planning on…sending 120,000 troops to the Middle East.  As we talked about yesterday, he’s already moved a carrier battle group into the region, and B-52 bombers are being staged into the area.

Now the State Department has ordered the consulates in Iraq be evacuated.  US central command in the Middle East has troops on high alert citing threats from Syria and Iran.  The problem, though, is that no one outside of the US government sees ANY increased threat from Iran.  In fact, the senior British officer in the coalition anti-terrorism operation in the Middle East confirms there is no increased threat; Trump responded to his comments as “fake news”.

In 2002, I was highly skeptical of all the bullshit that Bush/Cheney was peddling to whip up a war with Saddam Hussein.  Nothing they said made any sense, and there was NO evidence that Iraq had anything whatsoever to do with the 9/11 attacks.  This drumbeat to war feels the same to me.  No one with the government has given ANY evidence that Iran or Syria are doing anything that is more threatening that their normal hostility.  Because of these circumstances, I’m going to continue calling bullshit on Trump and call this what it is – Wagging the Dog to win the next election.  Nothing more, nothing less.

Remember when Trump kept repeating the lie that Barack Obama was going to start a war with Iran to get re-elected in 2012?  Here it is:

Later, when he decided to run for the office, Trump released continuous Twitter salvos of all kinds of lies and taunts, but the Iran theme was a common one.

One thing we’ve learned from Trump (and other Republicans, BTW) is that when he accuses someone of doing something vile, he’s doing that very thing.  Now, with his polls in the tank and still going down, Trump is so desperate that he’ll try anything to get re-elected and stay out of jail for a while longer.  As we’ve discussed before, Trump is even trying to get impeached so he can cast himself as a “victim” of the big, bad, Democrats.  Since that’s not working, his next stunt is doing exactly what he accused Obama of doing – starting a war with Iran.  What’s really scary is that he’s got Iran hater, John Bolton, continually whispering in his ear achieve his ultimate dream of bombing the crap out of Iran.

Trump’s already moved a carrier battle group and Air Force bombers to the Middle East to “counter Iran’s threat”, and now, Bolton is pushing for deploying 120,000 US troops to the Middle East.  The drumbeats of war for politics are now being heard, even as Pompeo and Bolton whip up fears of Iran, just in time for the 2020 election.  The only real threat we have is allowing Trump another 4 years in the WH.

It’s becoming clear that Trump is getting ready to pull some stupid (read dangerous) stunt in the next couple of weeks.  This morning, he tweeted that next Thursday, he is releasing all classified documents about the Kennedy assassination investigation.  The documents are believed to be a treasure trove for historians (and conspiracy theorists) and should cause quite an uproar.  This tweetnouncement comes on the heels of a puzzling WH announcement yesterday that Trump has signed an amendment to GWB’s Executive Order 13223 signed in 2001 right after 9/11.  The original order was given to activate the ready reserve of armed forces and the expand the authority of the Secretary of Defense as he was ginning up the “War on Terror”, meaning he was going to attack Iraq.

When Trump signed the amendment yesterday, questions started flying about what it meant.  No one really knew, until word got out this morning that Trump signed the order so the Air Force could recall 1,000 pilots.  That’s right, kids, 1,000 pilots who’ve moved on in their lives are being recalled.

This goofy sumbitch is going to start a real live rootin’ tootin’ shooting war to distract from the FBI investigation and the chaos that has become a part of our daily lives.  Oh, and there’s this little detail:  There are 3 special elections coming up in November and December to take Jeff Sessions seat in Alabama, Jason Chafetz seat in Utah, and Tim Murphy’s seat in Pennsylvania where Dems stand a chance of gaining ground on the Repubs prior to the 2018 elections.  In Alabama, the Repubs nominated lunatic and weirdo who wears a tiara on his cowboy hat, Roy Moore, to run against Dem Doug Jones who wasn’t give a prayer to win even a month ago.  Now, the latest poll, conducted by none other than Fox Noise, has Jones TIED with Moore.  Is it because Jones is that strong?  Not likely.  It’s more like, as written by John Archibald wrote in Al.com, Roy Moore is falling in the polls because,

“…every time Roy Moore speaks, Roy Moore comes out of his mouth. And as history has shown, the more Moore is heard, the more Alabamians – even staunchly conservative, deeply religious, red-on-red Alabamians – begin to have doubts.”

If Alabama goes to the Dems, that makes the Senate 51-49, making control even more possible for the Dems in 2018. Repubs always do better in elections when the government has voters terrified of dark skinned scary people, especially when those dark skinned scary people don’t like the US.

Am I saying that Donald Trump is going to start a shootin’ war to distract from his own troubles and get Republicans elected to Congress?  That’s EXACTLY what I’m arguing.  Even in the chaos that is today’s US government, patterns emerge.  And one pattern that is clear is that Trump will do ANYTHING, (like releasing controversial classified material or starting a war) no matter how many people will get killed or lives destroyed to make himself feel or look better, at least in his own mind.

And I’ll bet you a loaf of my homemade bread and a case of my home brewed beer that I’m dead on with this one (no pun intended).

In case you missed it, here is the Mar-a-Lago war room —

You’ll note that they are all sitting on the standard issue war room delicate gold rattan chairs.

If some of these names are not familiar to you, here’s a handy guide.

Seriously, y’all, what the hell is that Steve Miller guy doing in there?  I mean, except to make Bannon look sane.

I agree with El Jefe below.  This whole bombing thing was a fake reality show.

And in Irony of the Hour, Sean Hannity on September 3rd, 2013.

UPDATE:  Well, here ya go.

Raytheon stock surged Friday morning, after 59 of the company’s Tomahawk missiles were used to strike Syria in Donald Trump’s first major military operation as President.

…

The shares of other missile and weapons manufacturers, including Boeing(BA, +0.83%), Lockheed Martin(LMT, +1.17%), Northrop Grumman(NOC, +0.90%)and General Dynamics(GD, +0.93%), each rose as much as 1%, collectively gaining nearly $5 billion in market value as soon as they began trading, even as the broader market fell.

Goes a long way explaining everything, doesn’t it?