Dear Gulf Arabs: Send Your Own Kids to Die For Your Oil

Gulf allies of the United States, led by Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, are urging President Donald Trump to continue prosecuting the war against Iran, arguing that Tehran hasn’t been weakened enough by the monthlong U.S.-led bombing campaign, according to U.S., Gulf and Israeli officials.
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Officials from Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates, Kuwait and Bahrain have conveyed in private conversations that they do not want the military operation to end until there are significant changes in the Iranian leadership or there’s a dramatic shift in Iranian behavior, according to the officials, who were not authorized to comment publicly and spoke on the condition of anonymity.

They can fuck all the way to off. They want this war to continue, then they should have their planes do some bombing. Send their own ground forces into harm's way.

But, knowing Trump, some freshly-created golden bauble and some cash will get him to send American soldiers to die for the white-robed cowards.

Rich man's war...

Once Again, War Gets Fought on the Backs of the Poor, Working and Middle Classes

Republicans are considering reductions in federal health spending to help pay for a budget bill containing as much as $200 billion to fund the Iran war and immigration enforcement.

Because it's unthinkable to increase taxes on big corporations and billionaires, the Republicans are going to push the cost of this war on those at the bottom of the pyramid.

Once again, the costs of war are folling on those least able to bear the burden.

Betcha Eric Trump’s Not Signing Up.

The U.S. Army has raised the maximum enlistment age to 42 and also relaxed rules on recruting individuals with drug convictions as the service continues to widen its recruiting pool.

He's 41, so he could go to his part. but that'll never happen. For the Trump family, public service is a means to enrich themselves. And there's very little money to be made in being an 11 Bravo.

What One Normally Does in a War, Right?

Allow the enemy to sell products to help fund their war machines. That is what Trump is doing for both Russia and Iran.

The Orange Dimwit thinks that he's helping global energy markets, but what's at sea in those tankers probably amounts to a popcorn fart in the market. But what it does is put money in the pockets of hostile regimes to fund their side of the wars.

And Russia is hostile, make no mistake about that.

Meanwhile, Commandante Bone Spurs, who dodged the draft with an allegedly fake ailment and who reportedly threatened to disown his kids if they joined the military after 9-11, and who regards those who serve in the military as "suckers" and "losers", thinks that countries that won't help him clean up his mess are cowards.

Anone see Trump's youngest child or his oldest grandkids walking into a recruiting station lately? Or those of any of his Cabinet officers or advisors? No? I thought not.

ETA: And he's just fucking delusional.

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— George Conway ⚖️🇺🇸 (@gtconway.bsky.social) March 21, 2026 at 3:51 PM

Israel is Just Fucking Stupid and High on Their Own Supply

Did anyone not expect this, other than delusional Bibi, after Israel bombed an Iranian gas field?

What was the military value of attacking an Iranian economic target, other than maybe making life even harder for the Iranian people, even if the regime does change? Do the Israelis beleive that hammering economic targets will win them any friends?

As for Trump, well, he's just completely ineffectual at this point. And he's just a disrespectful fuck. The families at the last dignified transfer wanted it to be a private ceremony, but he was not only having nothing of that, he's been using those solemn ceremonies to raise even more money.

Cadet Bone Spurs Isn't Afraid of Getting Other People's Kids Killed

Donald Trump is openly entertaining the possibility of putting boots on the ground in Iran.

Speaking with reporters at the White House Tuesday beside Irish Taoiseach Micheál Martin, Trump sluggishly claimed that he wouldn’t be afraid to put the lives of American soldiers at risk in order to continue his nonsensical war.

“The Iranian regime has told Sky News that if you put boots on the ground in Iran, it would be another Vietnam. Are you afraid of that?” asked a journalist.

“No, I’m not afraid of—I’m really not afraid of anything,” Trump said.

But he sure was afraid sixty years ago when his dad allegedly paid a doctor to write a letter claiming Trump had bone spurs, so he wouldn't get drafted into the OG Vietnam War.

You can bet your farm and the minerals underneath that none of Trump's relatives will ever wear a military uniform, let alone be shot at in any of his stupid wars.

Two Human Pieces of Shit

President Donald Trump’s former personal lawyer and fixer, Michael Cohen, was returned to federal prison Thursday, after balking at certain conditions of the home confinement he was granted because of the coronavirus pandemic.

If you're in the joint and the Man tells you that you can get out early if you agree to X, Y and Z, that's not generally up for negotiation. You can agree or sit your ass in stir.

On to the next one:

The Democratic senator and Iraq war veteran Tammy Duckworth, who was awarded the Purple Heart medal after losing her legs during combat operations in 2004 as a helicopter pilot, has been targeted in an apparent smear campaign from leading Fox News host Tucker Carlson, who labelled her a “coward” during a segment on his show on Tuesday evening.

Carlson was 31 years old when the Twin Towers fell. Nothing stopped him from dragging his pasty ass down to the recruiting office and signing up to do his part in the War on terror. Carlson, a prep-school brat, has been just another right-wing troll, cheering on as other people do the fighting, the bleeding and the dying. His only combat has been as one of the Fighting Keyboardists of the 101st Chickenhawks.

Tammy Duckworth, who is a year older than Carlson, was flying a UH-60 when a RPG hit the helo, blowing off both of her legs. She came close to losing her right arm, as well. Her patriotism has been documented in the blood that she shed for his country, in the body parts that she left in the wreckage of her helicopter.

Chickenhawks like Carlson have no right, morally or otherwise, to question anyone else's patriotism, most certainly if the person they're slamming has a DD-214. That most emphatically applies to Carlson and his master, the Donald.

Rubio is a Class A Dimbulb

#Iraq is reconsidering its relationship with the U.S.?

A relationship in which we give them $2 billion a year & they privately beg us to stay & help them fight #ISIS & counter-balance #Iran. But they get to publicly condemn us for protecting our troops?https://t.co/Qu8zhKhGS8

— Marco Rubio (@marcorubio) January 4, 2020

Let's review, shall we? We invaded their country on false pretenses, killed maybe a half-million of their citizens, made several million homeless, wrecked much of their infrastructure, loosed the demons of sectarian warfare, effectively facilitated the existence of ISIS and AQiI, shot motorists for no goddamned good reason, installed a corrupt government that couldn't even put together an effective army (lots of corruption and ghost soldiers on the payrolls) and which has edged into the Iranian orbit, bulldozed a good part of their capital city for an occupation HQ, and for all that, they are insufficiently grateful, according to little Marco?

OK, sure, Saddam is gone. Fat lot of good that has done us.

But hey, don't worry, Mike Pence, the second-dumbest of Trump's lieutenants, is peddling a bullshit conspiracy theory that Iran was behind the 9-11 attacks. Hey, Mikey, you dipwad, remember when you clowns were saying that it was Iraq? Now it's Iran?

Fucking imbeciles. The 9-11 conspiracy theories do have a purpose; for they are handy for signaling which politicians have an IQ in the mid-two-digit range.

Trust This Guy About Iran?

Remember, as Trump's administration tries to make a case for going to war with Iran, that this is the same guy who spent days and days covering up and lying about a hurricane forecast.

Got Evidence, Mikey?

U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo has blamed Iran for the attack Saturday on key Saudi oil infrastructure. On Sunday, senior U.S. officials again said the American government believes there is no doubt Iran was responsible, saying satellite imagery and other intelligence, show the strike was inconsistent with one launched from Yemen, where Iranian-backed Houthi rebels had claimed responsibility.

"We knowed they done it" is not proof.

We've been down this road before, with Bush43's administration hyping up bullshit and speculation in order to justify the war of aggression that both Bush and Cheney wanted to launch.

The difference here, though, is that Trump's not inclined to satisfy the warmongering wet dreams of Pompeo and his ilk.

Trump's Work on Iran

Iran on Monday began enriching uranium to 4.5%, just breaking the limit set by its nuclear deal with world powers, while it is still seeking a way for Europe to help it bypass U.S. sanctions amid heightened tensions between Tehran and Washington.

This is all on Trump. There was a deal in place. It might not have been perfect, but
objective observers had confirmed that Iran was complying.

Its fault, in the eyes of the World's Oldest Toddler, was that the agreement was negotiated by Obama (and other countries). Trump tore it up because Trump hates Everything Obama.

So here we are, with Iran doing exactly what the deal Trump tore up sought to prevent.

Heckovajob, Donnie.

Trump Has More Sense Than Bolton

President Trump said Friday morning that the United States military had been “cocked and loaded” for a strike against Iran on Thursday night, but that he called it off with 10 minutes to spare when a general told him that 150 people would likely die in the attack.

Here are words you will rarely see on this blog: Trump was right to call off the strike. Killing over 100 people in retaliation for Iran shooting down a fucking robot would be just the sort of insanity that Bolton and Pompeo would promote.

And then there is this:

Still, there remained doubt inside the United States government over whether the drone, or another American surveillance aircraft, this one flown by a military aircrew, did violate Iranian airspace at some point, according to a senior administration official.

So we aren't sure where the drone was or whether there was another American aircraft there that did intrude into Iranian airspace? And maybe the Iranians shot down the right drone or locked onto the wrong drone?

For that, Bolton and Pompeo (and Chief Torturer Haspert) want to start a war? Jesus. Well, we all knew what we were getting with Bolton, at least, which is why Trump put him in a job not requiring Senate confirmation.

What the Hell is Going On, Now; PGW 3.0 Ed.

The United States abruptly called off preparations for a military strike against Iran over the downing of a U.S. surveillance drone, a U.S. official said, while Iran claimed Friday it had issued several warnings before shooting down the drone over what it said was Iranian territory.

And:

President Trump approved military strikes against Iran in retaliation for downing an American surveillance drone, but pulled back from launching them on Thursday night after a day of escalating tensions.

As late as 7 p.m., military and diplomatic officials were expecting a strike, after intense discussions and debate at the White House among the president’s top national security officials and congressional leaders, according to multiple senior administration officials involved in or briefed on the deliberations.

Officials said the president had initially approved attacks on a handful of Iranian targets, like radar and missile batteries.

The operation was underway in its early stages when it was called off, a senior administration official said. Planes were in the air and ships were in position, but no missiles had been fired when word came to stand down, the official said.

Absent some unknown backchannel communications, it would seem that teeing up a military strike and then backing down is a move that the Iranians are going to take as a signal that Trump has no stomach for this.

Is Trump Waking Up to How Much He's Been Rolled by Bolton and Pompeo?

President Trump has told his acting defense secretary, Patrick Shanahan, that he does not want to go to war with Iran, according to several administration officials, in a message to his hawkish aides that an intensifying American pressure campaign against the clerical-led government in Tehran must not escalate into open conflict.

There was a process for diplomatic discussions with Iran. But between the machinations of chickenhawks like Pompeo and Bolton and the infantile dislike by Trump of everything Obama did, Trump blew that up last year.

The chickenhawks have persuaded Trump that by tightening things on Iran, that the Iranians would bend to their will. It hasn't happened. Other than the Saudis and the Israelis, who are always happy for Americans to shed blood and treasure for them, there is precious little support around the world for Bolton's War. To the rest of the world, the irrational player in this has been Trump. If anyone has managed to make the Iranian government appear to be a sober and thoughtful party, it has been Trump.

Trump may now want to talk to Iran, but to the Iranians, the current crisis has been manufactured by the chickenhawks. Trump has been painted into a corner by the chickenhawks.

He may now be realizing that Pompeo and Bolton are no friends of Trump, that they view Trump as a puppet whose strings they can pull.

Trump's War (or Bolton's)

The U.S. on Wednesday ordered all nonessential government staff to leave Iraq, and Germany and the Netherlands both suspended their military assistance programs in the country in the latest sign of tensions sweeping the Persian Gulf region over still-unspecified threats that the Trump administration says are linked to Iran.
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The U.S. on Wednesday ordered all nonessential government staff to leave Iraq, and Germany and the Netherlands both suspended their military assistance programs in the country in the latest sign of tensions sweeping the Persian Gulf region over still-unspecified threats that the Trump administration says are linked to Iran.

Pompeo, of course, is lying like a senior Trump official:

US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo has said the United States does not seek a war with Iran, amid rapidly growing tensions between the two countries.

The Iran nuclear deal was not perfect. But Trump blew it up because of his childish opposition to anything and everything that President Obama did. That is the bottom line for Trump: He's opposed to everything Obama did. It is a level of childish vindictiveness that normal people outgrow by the time their age reaches double digits.

If a war ensues, the U.S. is likely going to be largely going it alone. The rest of the Western world is blaming Trump for ratcheting up tensions with Iran. Bolton, in particular, is trying to engineer a war. It has apparently been Bolton's lifelong dream to mastermind a war, and now he seems to be achieving his goal.

In a just world, Bolton would be in a jail cell in The Hague for war mongering.

Trump, who has criticized other presidents for getting into wars in the Middle East, is on the verge of making the mother of all foreign policy fuckups.

Trump's the Only Guy Who Thinks That a Warmonger Isn't Going to Monger Wars

President Trump is questioning his administration’s aggressive strategy in Venezuela following the failure of a U.S.-backed effort to oust President Nicolás Maduro, complaining he was misled about how easy it would be to replace the socialist strongman with a young opposition figure, according to administration officials and White House advisers.
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Trump has said in recent days that Bolton wants to get him “into a war” — a comment that he has made in jest in the past but that now betrays his more serious concerns, one senior administration official said.

Bolton was one in a long string of Republican draft-dodgers during the Vietnam War. Having successfully dodged that shooting war, his entire career has been spent advocating that the United States get into one war after another. He has never seen a foreign policy issue that he thinks can be solved by anything short of dropping bombs.

Bolton is a chickenhawk, through and through. Trump should have known that when he hired the man.

Because Warmongers Gotta Monger

Trump has canceled the summit with North Korea.

The president made his announcement in a remarkably personal, at times mournful-sounding letter to Mr. Kim, North Korea’s leader, in which he cited the North’s “tremendous anger and open hostility” in recent public statements as the specific reason for canceling the meeting.

No, Donnie, me boy, this isn't on Kim. This is all on John Bolton and Mike Pence. Both of those "worthies" have made comments in recent days alluding to the Libyan cessation of its nuclear program as the model for North Korea.

What the North Koreans are aware of and, no doubt, John Bolton, as well, is that things didn't turn out so well for the leader of Libya afterwards. Referring to the "Libyan model" was a direct provocation, which Bolton knew it would be.

Whether or not Pence did, as well, I'm not so sure of. The lad doesn't seem to be terribly smart.

But Bolton did. Bolton was one of those well-connected draft-dodgers who secured a spot in the National Guard, rather than go to Vietnam. He makes no bones about being a draft-dodger, just like other noted chickenhawks, such as Dick Cheney. Bolton wasn't willing to put his precious pink bod on the line for this country, but he sure seems to be awfully eager to fill up Arlington National Cemetery.

As much as I'd grit my teeth, if Trump did secure peace on the Korean Peninsula, he'd damn well deserve the Nobel Peace Prize.

And maybe, if Trump realizes that Bolton's mouth is going to cost him that, Trump will throw Bolton back to his permanent job of running his mouth on Fox News.

How Many Wars Does Draft-Dodging Trump Want to Get Into?

Donald Trump said last night he was considering possible military action against Venezuela in response to Nicolas Maduro's power grab.

Mr Trump told reporters at his New Jersey golf course that he was "not going to rule out" a military option".

Afghanistan is ongoing. Resuming the Korean War, this time with nuclear weapons, is on the table. And now Trump is thinking about going into Venezuela?

Right. Cheap talk from a fat old man who has a family history of draft-dodging. Nobody in Trump's family has ever served in the armed forces, at least those who could have passed the ASVAB.

Trump is a chickenhawk, pure and simple. And, like all of the other chickenhawks, they are more than eager to send other people's kids off to fight and die. It never touches them.

Remember When the Republicans Lambasted Bill Clinton for Being a "Draft Dodger"?

Bet they won't have shit to say about The Donald's five deferments. Just as they said nothing about Romney's or Cheney or Ashcroft or Quayle or Dubya or Limbaugh not going to fight.

Other than the points that (a) Trump can't keep his story straight as to why he wasn't drafted and (b) GOP hypocrisy, the "he didn't serve in Vietnam" is sort of a bogus charge. If you were alive and sentient at the time, you might recall that draft dodging was a very common endeavor, especially among middle-class and upper-class white boys.

Still, they all seem to become chickenhawks in the end.

Even if it was common as all fuck, Trump sort of stands out, though, as somebody who both dodged the draft and then didn't feel an ounce of guilt or remorse at the fact that somebody else had to go and fight in his stead. Because the meatgrinder that was the Vietnam War was always kept supplied with fresh cannon fodder.

Is There No Idea That is Too Bad for Bloody Bill to Contemplate It?

In spite of his insistence that he will not run, Mitt Romney is being courted this week by a leading conservative commentator to reconsider and jump into the volatile 2016 presidential race as an independent candidate.

William Kristol, the longtime editor of the Weekly Standard magazine and a leading voice on the right, met privately with the 2012 nominee on Thursday afternoon to discuss the possibility of launching an independent bid, potentially with Romney as its standard-bearer.

Kristol was one of the leading cheerleaders for the Iraq War, which should give you some idea of his acumen.

A very good rule of thumb is that if Kristol has taken a stand on an issue, seriously consider going with the opposing point of view.