It’s always annoying when the actual headlines of a story I’m writing about are way funnier than anything I could ever say about them.

That’s it. That’s the joke.

What am I supposed to do with this? How am I supposed to say something witty and insightful about a story whose headlines all sound like they were rejected by The Onion for being too silly? Warmongering legislators like Lindsey Graham and Chuck Schumer have no idea where American military interventionism is happening, weeks after the Senate voted by a nearly two-to-one margin to kill Senator Rand Paul’s amendment to sunset the 16 year-old Authorization for Use of Military Force (AUMF) which has been used to justify disastrous US military interventionism in places like Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Syria, Yemen, Somalia, and, apparently, Niger. What else is there to say?

If you ever need a solid example to point to when discussing the fact that elected officials are ultimately just impotent pawns of the deep state, this would be it. Lindsey Graham sounds like the a trembling alcoholic Mafia wife being interrogated, saying “Oh I can never keep track of what those boys are up to! It’s too much for my little head.”

Seriously, look at this shit:

“I didn’t know there was 1,000 troops in Niger,” Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-South Carolina, told NBC’s Chuck Todd on “Meet the Press” Sunday. “They are going to brief us next week as to why they were there and what they were doing.” He continued: “I got a little insight on why they were there and what they were doing. I can say this to the families: They were there to defend America. They were there to help allies. They were there to prevent another platform to attack America and our allies.” Graham also said during the interview that his longtime friend and colleague in the Senate, Arizona Republican Sen. John McCain, is frustrated, “rightly so.” “We don’t know exactly where we’re at in the world, militarily, and what we’re doing. So John McCain is going to try to create a new system to make sure that we can answer the question (about) why we were there,” he said. “We’ll know how many soldiers are there, and if somebody gets killed there, that we won’t find out about it in the paper.”

You know Graham’s in trouble when he invokes Big Daddy McCain, who has been trying to blame his faction’s airheaded ignorance on the current administration like this is something new that just started in January. Turns out though, Graham had actually been informed of US military actions in Niger:

This man has been up to his elbows in numerous defense committees and subcommittees for years, where he’s had access to protected information about military affairs. Not that US involvement in Niger has been a secret:

It is ostensibly Graham’s job to know these things, the information has not been kept from him, and yet he didn’t know it. This is because Graham, like McCain and every other professional war hawk who has built their political career on carrying water for the military-industrial complex, was not elevated to his position so that he could keep meticulous track of all US military operations and help make responsible decisions for the defense of the American people. Graham was elevated to his position for the sole purpose of facilitating endless war. If the military is already engaged somewhere, there’s no reason for Graham to care about it anymore. Graham’s purpose is to help manufacture public and legislative support for sustaining and expanding US military operations, not monitoring and learning about them. He’s not in research and development, he’s in sales.

Graham, like virtually everyone at high levels of elected government in America, is a pawn of the plutocracy. Some elected officials specialize in kowtowing for the agendas of medical industry plutocrats, some for big oil, some for Wall Street, some for Silicon Valley, most for neoliberal deregulation and globalization, and most for the neoconservative policies of the US war machine. Graham happens to be a specialist in the latter, but it’s the same with damn near everyone on Capitol Hill: they are there to serve their donors, not to ask questions.

Yeah, that’s the stuff Lindsey. Good monkey. Have a banana.

If he didn’t do it, though, they’d just find some other trained monkey war whore. The unelected power establishment which has set up shop in the United States necessarily needs to keep its military might engaged all over the world to disrupt the rise of a competing superpower; their entire empire depends on it. They’re banking on being able to use guns and propaganda to stomp down the massive upheavals that are looming on the horizon and maintain their kingdom forever. Rulers seldom go quietly. Go they will, though. Go they will.

— — —

Hey you, thanks for reading! My work is entirely reader-funded so if you enjoyed this piece please consider sharing it around, liking me on Facebook, following me on Twitter, and maybe throwing some money into my hat on Patreon or Paypal.