Jeb (!) Bush has surprised the staff at the Café by becoming one of its regulars. We had held a booth open for Ben Carson, certainly, and the Ricks – Santorum and Perry – have had their own since 2011. But we didn't expect to see Jeb (!) so consistently filling the chair bearing the plaque with his older brother's name on the back. (We retired The Stupid there in 2009.) But, back he came today, ordering up a double helping of one of an old family recipe.

The potent attack against the former Secretary of State and likely Democratic nominee is shrewd politics: focusing on America's failure to keep the peace at the end of the Iraq War ignores the war's beginning — enabling Bush to conveniently shift the the blame from his brother, who started the war he now admits was a mistake, to the Democrat he'd likely face should he become the GOP nominee. (Ed. Note: Only if political reporters are dumb or lazy enough to let Jeb -!- get away with it.) "That premature withdrawal was the fatal error, creating the void that ISIS moved in to fill – and that Iran has exploited to the full as well," Bush will say, according to excerpts of his speech released Monday night by his campaign.

The withdrawal was not "premature." It happened right on a schedule drawn up by none other than the brother that Jeb (!) would rather not talk about right now. How many more American soldiers not named Bush would Jeb (!) have preferred be killed? How many soldiers did he want to see tried in Iraqi courts or – horrors! – under sharia law. Nobody from this family ever should say the word "Iraq" again without having their tongue turn into a pit viper and bite them in the balls.

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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