"Never again" is probably the most misused phrase in all of American politics. History has shown that we, as a political people, are inclined to make the same mistakes, over and over again, amen, until we either get bored with making them, or the accumulated repetition of the same mistake threatens to capsize the whole enterprise. If that's not correct, how come I've lived under two Presidents Bush in my lifetime?

Under the second of these, you may recall, a bunch of think-tank cowboys and chickenhawk bombardiers combined to con enough members of the Congress into going along with the biggest foreign-policy calamity since Vietnam. The elite political and national security press played their roles in this disaster, too, but, somehow, enough of our leaders thought invading Iraq was a terrific idea that even 150,000 people in the street didn't stop them. Later, of course, everybody felt really bad about everything and promised they'd learned from the whole fiasco.

Well, I guess we'll see now, won't we? From CNN:



A day after Secretary of State Mike Pompeo blamed Iran for the attack on Saudi oil facilities and argued there is "no evidence the attacks came from Yemen," a senior administration official briefed CNN on information to back up Pompeo's claims. The official pointed to the angle at which Saudi oil facilities were attacked, the numbers of points of impact and other information to argue that it is unlikely the attacks were carried out by Yemen. Instead, the official suggested the attack most likely originated in Iran or Iraq.

"Never again," indeed. STEPHEN JAFFE Getty Images

"It is very difficult to see how these things could have come from anywhere but Iran or Iraq," the senior administration official said. The official said 19 Saudi targets were struck in Saturday's attack and argued that such an attack could not be carried out with 10 drones, which the Houthis claimed to have used.



OK. Let's play the game I like to call Wolfowitz Bingo. Anonymous official? Check. Just enough fudge in the assertion to make it plausible? Check. Cool military-sounding jargon? ("Angle of attack," "points of impact"?) Check. Of course, this time, we are dealing with a transparently truthless president* who lies about everything and who clearly knows nothing about anything, so maybe we can save ourselves the catastrophe this time around.

In addition, instead of a phony, made-in-DC opposition like the one we had last time, if the U.S. is dumb enough to get embroiled in this mess, it will be on the side of the execrable regime in Saudi Arabia and of Muhammad bin Salman, who is taking a break from murdering and dismembering American residents to try and get us to protect his family's oil wealth. Last time, the people bringing you the war would have cut out their own spleens rather than admit we were going to war for oil. This time, that would be an obvious reason, along with the work of that large portion of the conservative foreign-policy hive mind that's been spoiling for a war with Iran since 1979.

(I choose not to think about one, how desperately El Caudillo del Mar-a-Lago needs a war to get re-elected, and two, how deeply in the pocket of the Saudis the president* might be.)

One hopes, please God, that all will be a harder sell over here this time around.

Charles P. Pierce Charles P Pierce is the author of four books, most recently Idiot America, and has been a working journalist since 1976.

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