Blowback Isn't Always Immediate

 

Breaking News: The Justice Dept. charged a member of Iran’s Revolutionary Guard on Wednesday for plotting to kill John Bolton, a Trump-era national security adviser. Prosecutors said the man had offered $300,000 to hire someone to kill Bolton. https://t.co/oHbuJ5ocXG

— The New York Times (@nytimes) August 10, 2022

Amidst Trump's Mar-a-Lago search warrant drama and the recent serving of several PA legislators over the false electors' scheme, the story of an assassination plot against John Bolton as a late retaliation over the slaying of General Suleimani surfaces for me as an example of something that US foreign/military policy sometimes fails at: theory of mind. The idea that our allies and enemies alike have the agency and will to respond in proportion and according to their own schedule is something that the "deciders" sometimes miss--almost as if they believe they are playing a game where the "other side" consists of NPC's.

That there would be blowback of some kind should have been obvious. That former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo is also a possible target of Iran's Revolutionary Guard would not shock me. And naturally, none of this helps the attempt to renew the JCPOA that the Trump Administration fecklessly scuttled. 

The decision to escalate tensions with Iran was a Trump Administration fuckup we will be dealing with for some time. It wasn't necessary--it was ideological, and yes, Bolton and Pompeo were obvious anti-Iran antagonists and I nonetheless do not endorse their mortal peril because of the decision that ultimately came down to a green and under-prepared CinC who may have thought the exercise was about dick-measuring and clout.

It is simply as natural as night following the day--actions do have consequences. It's not that the IRG's assassination plot is acceptable--no! But it isn't unexpected when you appreciate the other side has a side.  

What John Bolton Can Tell Us

‘He Is So Full Of Sh*t’: Bolton Claims Mike Pompeo, Others Mocked Trump Behind His Back. https://t.co/VXWifFciko

— Daily Caller (@DailyCaller) June 18, 2020

Well, that Trump isn't universally respected by people on his staff doesn't seem to be very new to me, and that he would do anything to be re-elected and views US policy only in light of self-benefit isn't really a shocker, either. That Trump is woefully incurious and spends briefings doing most of the talking, even though he needs to know things he simply does not know is also not a shocker. To me. The benefit of this book isn't for persuading people like me of Trump's many manifest and hidden deficits; it's for (possibly) ionforming those who would not hear those things unless they heard them from a die-hard conservative .

(Of course, we can now sit back and watch in real time as people who know him are going to say he was a RINO and they just don't know what to think about him now.)

What John Bolton can tell us is why he wants to criticize Democrats for not broadening the impeachment inquiry against Trump, when testimony from him would have greatly aided in determining the scale of Trump's impeachable perfidies.

But that's water under the bridge, I suppose.

What I am enjoying is watching Trump try to squelch the damaging info from this book badly, in a way that draws closer attention to it. I also didn't need Bolton to tell me Trump isn't an especially strategic thinker, but it is sometimes amusingly confirmed.

Bolton's Book Tour is a Bummer

BREAKING: John Bolton spoke publicly for the first time since the impeachment trial.

He was asked whether he thought Trump's July 25 call was “perfect.” Bolton says “you'll love Chapter 14” of his book.#Hardball pic.twitter.com/FBr4jQIiDf

— Hardball (@hardball) February 18, 2020

I love buying and reading books, and have several open at one time on any given day, but this entire man and his book can go get extraordinarily fucked. (And it's possible that it very well might still be fucked by the White House.) It's not that the whole wide world deserves "freebies" from something his publisher paid good money for. It's that this person believes that the truth has a price, when he might have information that matters regarding executive-level misconduct in our government. It's not cute. If he had something really worth telling to sell the resistance folks on, wouldn't it be more valuable if he wasn't just a Trump-recycled and discarded Bush-era warmonger, but a person who gave any sign whatsoever that he wasn't just a Fox News guest Trump was temporarily enamored with who got let go with cause?

Now, if there is something good in there, you know I will blog about that. From what others excerpt. But I wouldn't trust him at this point. And I wouldn't buy his book just to read the whole thing. Because what point of view did he have that I would have felt valuable up until any part of it might have been useful against Trump? (So much for so many angsty liberals.) So who is his audience? Neocon anti-Trumpers?

That doesn't sound like a big success to me. Nor especially worth holding his counsel for. But this seems to be his way of earning his advance, so? He's welcome to it.

Trump Admits His Judgment is Poor

Click to Enlarge

For a guy who said that he would hire "the best people" for the White House, it sure seems like there's a problem here. I mean, his first National Security Adviser uh, didn't do too well, and in the capped Tweets, Trump grumbles:

"For a guy who couldn't get approved for the Ambassador to the U.N. years ago, couldn't get approved for anything since, "begged" me for a non Senate approved job, mistakenly says "Libyan Model" on T.V., and...

...many more mistakes of judgment, gets fired because frankly, if I listened to him, we would be in World War Six by now, and goes out and IMMEDIATELY writes a nasty & untrue book. All Classified National Security. Who would do this?"

Who would do this? I dunno, man. You hired him. It is funny how some people do write books about their time in this White House, though.

Trump seems to be on a Twitter tear this morning FOR SOME REASON.

That Bolton Testimony is Looking More Relevant

At a May 23 meeting where top advisers and Senator Ron Johnson briefed him about their trip to the inauguration of President Zelensky, Mr. Trump railed about Ukraine trying to damage him and mentioned a conspiracy theory about a hacked Democratic server. https://t.co/N3Tsce4gR7

— Maggie Haberman (@maggieNYT) January 27, 2020

Right you guys? You guys? C'mooooonnnnnnnnnnn.

I guess what I'm saying is, it would look like even more of a cover-up (than it already does) if Republican senators did not think now would be a cool time to subpoena Bolton. It's inconvenient if they do subpoena him, obviously. It's also inconvenient if they don't.

Oh well.

UPDATE: And for what it's worth, they can call this guy the hell in, too.

I NEVER told John Bolton that the aid to Ukraine was tied to investigations into Democrats, including the Bidens. In fact, he never complained about this at the time of his very public termination. If John Bolton said this, it was only to sell a book. With that being said, the...

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 27, 2020

UPDATE 2: The White House has had the manuscript for weeks, and WH counsel was very likely read in, and McConnell said he was working hand in glove with the Trump team, so:

Per sources, some GOP senators privately pushing White House for information on who at administration had visibility into the manuscript over the last month. Senators feel blindsided.

— Maggie Haberman (@maggieNYT) January 27, 2020

Goddamnitalltohell, GOP Senators want to know who put them on the spot like this!

Not for Nothing, But...

Former national security adviser John Bolton says he will testify if he is subpoenaed by the Senate https://t.co/TEPYUSAtPA

— The Washington Post (@washingtonpost) January 6, 2020

Does anyone think that John Bolton is really, really good with the idea of testifying at the impeachment trial if the senate subpoenas him, or is he just really good with the idea that the senate really, really is not gonna subpoena him? (I'm just wondering what would happen if the House had some additional inquiries lingering....)

UPDATE: Sen Rubio thinks subpoenaing Bolton would be unnecessary:

Rubio on why he would vote against a subpoena of Bolton: "I think in my view our inquiry should be based on the testimony that they took, we are acting on articles of impeachment. We should be constrained by the information that those articles are based on." pic.twitter.com/IOyCkw6ZxU

— Manu Raju (@mkraju) January 6, 2020

But....but....but....what if he had information that made things look better for Trump?


Hahahahaha. Of course not. We get it.

TWGB: Where is the Defense?

Rep. Jordan says Congress won’t be able to question the one “who started it all,” referring to the whistleblower.

Rep. Welch: "I'd be glad to have the person who started it all to come in and testify. President Trump is welcome to take a seat right there." pic.twitter.com/nE8Exwn3CG

— BuzzFeed News (@BuzzFeedNews) November 13, 2019

The funny old thing that wrecks the defense for President Trump is that the White House has not been forthcoming with access to the people who should be able to, reputedly, sort things out. We have the call summary, which is "THE TRANSCRIPT" that Trump has Tweeted that he would very much like us to read, the whistleblower complaint (which we were told is irrelevant since it contains so much hearsay), and the transcripts of the closed-door depositions of people who were very truly adjacent to the apparent extortionate goings-on. And now we have the beginning of the open hearings.

If Team Trump wants a good defense, they shouldn't be expending so much energy on what the whistle-blower knew and when he/she knew it (although the report gives a good accounting of that much), let alone who that person is, because it simply should not matter. We wouldn't suspend a criminal trial on the basis of not knowing who called 911, and we shouldn't hold up anything to do with the impeachment proceedings because we don't know who the whistleblower is. It's a waste of time. The problem is "what was the President of the US about when he apparently extorted the president of another country with aid that was already allotted in exchange for receipt of bad press/oppo research on a potential political opponent?" The whistleblower could be a socialist, a Dallas Cowboys fan, an enthusiastic kiwi fruit eater, a Scientologist--it just doesn't matter as much as what the principals in this matter did.

So, why aren't we hearing from Bolton, Mulvaney, Pompeo, Pence, Trump himself? It should be the case that, were the situation misconstrued and the actual situation wholly innocent, that the persons closest to it could most ably describe what really did occur? Would they not then be providing reams of documents, a surfeit of reasonings, to absolve them of their present dilemma? Why, instead, are the people who would be deemed most circumstantially culpable, like Mulvaney, just out there subpoena-dodging?

Could it be because, to use the vernacular, the defense ain't got shit? Because that is what it is starting to sound like.

What a Week Today's Been!

What with all that's been going down on the home front, one might have been wondering where William Barr's been keeping himself, what with being front page news in the whistleblower report and having been mentioned by name by President Trump on the Zelenskyy phone call as being definitely someone who should be contacted with any information he might have about....something to do with Joe Biden or something to do with Ukraine. He's apparently been in Italy--hunting geese. Or chasing them. Something like that.

Everyone is now reminded that Trump did say back in May that Barr would be beating the bushes to get at the origin of the Russian investigation and find the real culprits, even in Australia or Ukraine. I'm just staggered the man is actually going off and doing that. I mean, when Trump said he had people finding out "very interesting things" in Hawaii in the search for Obama's birth certificate, or investigating the rampant voter fraud in California, those were kind of elaborate leg pulls. But this!

Forget about Trump having gotten his Roy Cohn. He's got his attorney general hitting the pavement for him like a private detective. Homuncule Pierrot best mind what he's doing though--it might wind him up in a little gray cell. But everyone is doing it, no? His Secretary of State Mike Pompeo is also off to Europe, with Sebastian Gorka, for some reason. Don't ask me why. Gorka is a man with a very specific set of skills. Just because no one knows what they are is no reason to think they aren't real.

Anyway, today we found out that Pompeo, who seemed a little befuddled about what was in the call summary on the news shows, turns out to have been in on the call.  Do you know who wasn't, though? Recently (it seems like forever ago, but it really wasn't!) fired (or resigned) NSA John Bolton. He did not approve. I once wrote a blogpost called "John Bolton is Still a Bloodthirsty Loon", but you know what? If Bolton wants to dish I will make martinis and listen and drink all the martinis. (He also demonstrates why he was out of the loop on North Korea, but there are no heroes with this one.)

In other news, the IC IG just wanted everyone to know that nobody changed the rules for whistleblowers at the last minute to make this particular report kosher, no matter what the president wants to Tweet. The individual indicated they had first hand knowledge of some things, and second hand knowledge of other things and the report was all good and legal--but you want to know what?

The call summary, though. It still has Trump hanging support over the Ukrainian president's head while he suggests two favors. Congress-approved taxpayer money to help a country under fire from Russia, dangled to help save Trump's orange peel ass. If anyone wants to pretend there is no quid pro quo there (and there doesn't have to be) I would still let them know context is important, because this wasn't the first time Zelenskyy was hearing any of this, apparently. Also, the participation of Pompeo now makes Giuliani's claims that the State Department knew what he was doing seem so much less daft (I mean, still a little, but less).

We still don't know what Giuliani's clearance is. Or if you could really say he was really working as Trump's attorney on this one. (How?) But those things could very well be answered, because Giuliani has now been subpoenaed by the House, and Pompeo is, too.

Apparently, the 2016 election and investigation thereof refuses to die. Would you be surprised to know that Trump may have lied! Lied! To one Robert Mueller? Wow! If only we ever had some prior historical reason to believe that Trump was damn-near congenitally untruthful!

I'm tired folks. I'm thinking I will finish this post, go back on Twitter, and see links to like, a half-dozen more things that got dug up a minute ago. But I will post about them tomorrow, for tomorrow is another day! Or like, a week, in TrumpWorld time.

Trump Has a Favorite Dictator and Other Tales of the Decline

In what will doubtless be a shock to the other dictators, Trump recently (a couple weeks back) voiced the opinion that he did,  in fact, have a favorite dictator (sorry Kim, Putin, etc.!):

Donald Trump once referred to Egyptian president Abdel Fattah al-Sisi as his "favourite dictator" as he awaited a meeting with the world leader, according to a new report.

The comment, detailed in a new Wall Street Journal report, was met with stunned silence from American and Egyptian officials, who had gathered inside the Hotel du Palais in Biarritz, France for this year's G7 summit.

"Where's my favourite dictator?" Mr Trump is reported to have said in a loud voice, several people who were in the room told the Journal.

Those witnesses said that they believed his comment was made in jest, but was nonetheless met with muted response. It is not clear if Mr Sisi was in the room, or if he heard the comment.

That's certainly sounding like a case of "the quiet bits out loud" but wow! This isn't really on the order of "things Trump usually says which are merely stupid" and vaults into the level of "things Trump says (like wanting to purchase Greenland, remember that?) which are both weird and can screw up international relations."

He is, though. The international relationships--he's messing them up. Things like firing (if he did) John Bolton, who I once characterized as a "bloodthirsty loon", would seem great if Trump was not likely to put someone in his stead who was as bad, if not worse.

But to be fair, he's messing up national security all around, including domestically. Instead of a wall that Mexico is building, it looks like we have a wall (not yet!) that the US military will build, and instead of a brilliant deal with North Korea for them to stop their nuclear program, we've got a North Korea nuclear program that, well, we're building, inadvertently, because Trump doesn't understand why we need to build up our cyber defense.

But he also doesn't understand our intelligence apparatus at all, either, which is definitely worrisome. He doesn't believe our links with foreign intelligence offices (like the Israeli contact he blew to Lavrov and Kislyak back in 2017), but is weirdly prone to dismissing the possibility of foreign countries trying to scope in on us. (Which you'd think he'd be aware is a real interest, all things considered. I guess it's my distrust of Netanyahu that makes me see "security companies" like Psy Group as possible cut-outs, but I could be wrong.)

He also seems to have abandoned steering our good friend Russia away from weird nuclear ideas. But what the hell? One of Trump's big ideas was pulling us out of the Iran nuclear deal with his Fox News-inspired fantasies about pallets of cash to Iran, and his genius negotiating tool to get Iran back to the table (that we had them at, already, and got a deal with, already!) is--pallets-worth of credit--$15 Billion worth.

So, a similar plan, with less trust, that costs the US more? Wow! Mr. Art of the Deal! That is really....

Something. It's not good. None of this is good. We can't expect good from Trump, I'm just saying.

He called Sisi his "favorite dictator." He thinks the way he talks on Twitter is how he can communicate in life, and it doesn't even work that great on Twitter.  MAGA-hats--this is your king?  He's actually pretty stupid. Shouldn't that bother you more?

Pushed or Jumped?

So, uh, Trump fired Bolton, I guess. All I know is, Trump says you shouldn't believe reports of chaos and turmoil in the White House. He literally always says that. I don't know why he has to keep saying that. AT least Trump got Bolton's name right in the Tweet.

UPDATE:  It's a real Tuesday over here!

BOLTON IS TEXTING FOX HOSTS WHO ARE ON AIR TO DISPUTE TRUMP'S ACCOUNT OF HIS FIRING

Kilmeade: "John Bolton just texted me, just now, he's watching. He said, 'let's be clear, I resigned.'" pic.twitter.com/2zg8tPTf6L

— Lis Power (@LisPower1) September 10, 2019

Trump Boxed In, or Bolton Boxed Out?

Not for nothing, but NSA John Bolton was in Mongolia while all this was going down, so it's just possible the entire point was that Bolton not be in the know about everything. Trump foreign policy has a history of one hand not knowing what the other is doing. Also, Trump still calls John Bolton "Mike", so maybe they just aren't that tight.

Anyhow, I just think it's interesting (not amusing, not exactly) to find Bolton sputtering about Trump being boxed-in regarding a diplomatic issue as opposed to being boxed-in over a military one.

In other news, Iran has breached the limit on uranium production, which probably would not have occurred if SOME PEOPLE didn't just tear up the agreement that ensured they wouldn't.

From "Fire and Fury" to "Sound and Fury"

I haven't been blogging about Trump and Iran because the whole situation is basically incoherent to me. Last week's near-strike (which Trump says wasn't called BACK, no, no, he just didn't let it proceed after someone told him people could get killed) on Iran was awkward and whether the US drone shot down by Iran was in international airspace and not Iranian airspace is debatable. Pompeo and Bolton have been anti-Iran hawks since forever, and I think it would be dumb as hell to go to war with Iran, myself, whether over an honest mistake or a not very honest one.

Trump has a dilemma--he doesn't want to get boxed into a military conflict and he doesn't want to get boxed out of making a deal. The problem, though, is entirely one of his own making: there was a deal, the JCPOA, and he withdrew from it. He did do in a belligerent way, and hasn't exactly won back Iran's trust. Now he's putting sanctions on Iran to get them back to the table.

Yeah, that's not going to work. And then there is the Tweet-thread above, made after Trump was informed that Iranian President Rouhani called the White House's actions "mentally retarded". It's hard to say that going from sanctioning "Ayatollah Khomeini" to threatening obliteration rendered anything Trump is doing more coherent.

Trump has boxed himself out of negotiations thus far, and while he admits some of his advisers are hawks who prefer a military "solution"--Trump picked these guys! They are his advisers! So--?

It's his problem, but if he's successfully steered into war, there are plenty of folks on the GOP side who won't mind using the 2001 AUMF as justification to go for it (even if the House has another idea about it). It would be a dumb war, a repeat of the Iraq mistake, not as farce, but as greater tragedy, starting with tales told by an idiot.

What else is there to say?

Reporter: "Do you have an exit strategy for Iran if war does break out?"

President Trump: "You are not going to need an exit strategy. I don't need exit strategies" https://t.co/HB3tptBtmF pic.twitter.com/FDlSWjSxdJ

— CNN Politics (@CNNPolitics) June 25, 2019

Catapulting the Propaganda 2

hmmm: “The team of U.S. military experts was sent to investigate at request of UAE, but American officials have not provided details about what happened or any proof of possible Iranian involvement in the explosions” https://t.co/LP8wKWlsoK

— John Harwood (@JohnJHarwood) May 15, 2019

Some of you readers are like me and can remember where I filched the phrase "catapulting the propaganda" from--that was from the Bush Administration. George W. Bush admitted he had to repeat things over and over again for the "truth" to set in in order to "catapult the propaganda".  That word "truth" is a pretty slippery commodity, but the idea of "catapulting the propaganda" pretty accurately described his Administration's messaging. He let that moment of reality slip while talking about privatizing Social Security, but it more truthfully describes what happened regarding the use of repetition, changing justifications, and outright frauds to create a casus belli for the war in Iraq.

Now, here comes the Trump Administration, no strangers to repeating things that are inaccurate or unclear or perpetrating frauds, talking up the possibility of a threat of war with Iran out loud and in private (looking for their "slam dunk case" perhaps?). Even though our allies indicate that there seems to be no real urgent threat.

All I'm saying is, we have sure as hell been here before, and pretty damn recently, too. I don't think it's a "wag the dog" situation, necessarily, to draw attention away from the eleventy-odd investigations into Trump, his family, his businesses, etc., the unwisdom of his trade policies, or even necessarily because blood appeases his base--although I think that last thing, right there, might be a little relevant.

I see Sen. Cotton thinks an Iran War would short and sweet:

Senator @TomCottonAR tells Firing Line if it comes to war with Iran, he is confident the United States would win, and would win swiftly. “Two strikes, the first strike and the last strike,” says the Senator. pic.twitter.com/twTdrFTwHu

— Firing Line with Margaret Hoover (@FiringLineShow) May 14, 2019

This answer seems asinine for reasons I don't think one even has to have served in the military to figure out--a "first strike" indicates we start a war of choice to send a message. What the actual entire fuck thinking is that? Maybe the message inadvertently sent won't be "Don't start a war with us", but rather, "You might as well retaliate".(This is not an invitation to try and explain his thinking to me--it's not thinking!) After the first and last strike--then what? Because a war is pointless unless you can then win the peace. (Unless you don't actually want peace. I guess that, too, is a possibility.)

We did have a diplomatic deal with Iran for a bit and I know Cotton didn't like it at all, but the funny old thing is, you don't shoot at people or bomb them and expect diplomacy. You can just do diplomacy.

I'd love to think that having been here before, and having watched how Iraq played out (and is still, really, playing out), we could expect the media to not help "catapult the propaganda" but I don't know. Trump (and his allies') propaganda seems to be repeated all the time, even if, paragraphs down or further in the conversation, someone, somehow, factchecks. And the repetition is what matters for propaganda to succeed.

How A Trump Administration Will Look

As the President-elect Trump has not yet been sworn in, I'm trying to take the chatter about what his cabinet will look like with a grain of salt--I'm not saying I've never given in to speculation about it before, of course. It's just that some of what I'm hearing is so, so...really seriously awful.  I mean, we're looking at Rudy Giuliani or John Bolton for Secretary of State. One (Giuliani) I've regularly castigated as an abject racist, and the other (Bolton) I've whole-heartedly called a "blood-thirsty loon".  This is a picture that doesn't make me hopeful that we will see a Trump cabinet that is full of win.

I'm basically gritting my teeth about Trump settling for the "guys (mostly male) that he can get". So, take the idea that Steve Bannon of Breitbart moves from his position as the Trump Campaign CEO to senior advisor and Chief Strategist. There is this little problem called "He's known as a white supremacist". Like, this is a staffing decision the KKK and American Nazi Party endorse.  And whom one former Speaker of the House decided to say was not either anti-Semitic because he worked in finance and the media, which actually is itself kind of anti-Semitic.

But maybe Trump might feel beholden to someone who gave so much free internets publicity to his campaign and mitigated the other right-wing opposition against him?  Of course, Trump is going to think about rewarding his friends. Like Sen. Jeff Sessions.  You could probably try to complain that he doesn't even know exactly how his presidential responsibilities work--but he's going to catch on, you know. Executive experience and all that.

I just tend to think that a Trump Administration will look like the Trump Campaign. And even though it won the electoral college, gosh! I think it will be terrible. There are exactly zero things that make me think it could be otherwise.

An Apology Would Be Inappropriate

The image of President Obama, the first US president to visit the site where the nuclear age was unleashed, embracing the survivor of the Hiroshima bombing, marks a moment of an extraordinary acknowledgement of the enormity of nuclear weapons' use--without constituting an apology.

What president now living could apologize for an act which caused such casualties? How would we or could we place such an event in its historical perspective and re-litigate why it ever took place? It is not possible to entirely do so, but the correct approach is what Obama has done--acknowledge what happened, and point to a task to prevent the use of these devastating weapons from ever happening again.

This does not stop his insane detractors on the right, of course, who ignorantly decry an "apology tour" that has not ever happened in the course of Obama's presidency. What such ignorami reveal is a disgraceful inability to respect the idea of soft or even smart power--a total lack of appreciation for the very idea of diplomacy at all, or an understanding that the place of the US as first among nations and its standing and respect must flow from our adherence to some standard of decency. That we ought not torture, or detain without charge, or go to war without valid interest, or commit atrocities abroad should be a matter of our highest interest--on which our national reputation rests. That we reject nuclear attack or the idea of "total war" is a matter of principle.

It would be great if both parties understood this intimately and did not play the unattractive game of calling out our President as somehow being Un-American for trying to do what is fundamentally decent. But this is not how it is. This is not how it is at all.

The current GOP Presidential candidate is in favor of nuclear proliferation and torture, and has the full support of his party, with only some tepid reservations expressed by useless dupes who think the real problem with their guy is his "tone".

This image above is what America should be--big enough and strong enough to embrace the history we have made. I am sorry, myself--sorry that so many Americans are so very, very small.

John Bolton is Still a Blood-thirsty Loon, I See

It doesn't really surprise me that Sen. Ted Cruz thinks that former UN Ambassador (R-Ironic) John Bolton is the apian patellas--that particular candidate is happy as an arsonist in a match factory when he's signifying for the dropped-knuckle set. But a moment's reflection on how this dumbass thinks should reflect back on Cruz.

After all, the call to bomb Iran in this recent op-ed is blatantly stupid, or, to put it in context, shamefully consistent with the rest of his mental work-product. But to put it mildly, if someone has been paying a bit of attention to nuclear proliferation, his mention of Israel's 1981 attack on Osirak as being particularly successful is just babbling. Because the attack on Osirak didn't end Saddam Hussein's nuclear weapons program. After the 1991 US invasion of Iraq, inspectors discovered a pretty active underground nuclear program which was, depending upon who you asked, months or scant years from having bombs. The military strike damaged material capacity, but as I've been banging on about--it doesn't destroy know-how, and likely increases the desirability of having such a weapon.

For that matter, in the run-up to the 2003 Iraq invasion, Bolton was one of the very wrong people who insisted that Iraq had an ongoing nuclear program. When, no. Hussein isn't alive now for us to ask him about it, but it looks kind of like having sanctions on and inspectors in was keeping him largely in check. So is there any earthly reason why anyone should listen to this yutz?