Do You Think The Worst Presidency In The History Of The U.S. Will End Without A War?

It increasingly looks like Trump is ginning up a war with Iran to get peoples' minds off the Mueller Report and the myriad other problems that are spinning out of control and drowning his presidency and his hopes for reelection. Maybe Venezuela? Yeah, there's always that... but the Saudis and Israelis are both really pushing for the U.S. to attack Iran.

On Wednesday, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo was testifying at a Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing when Rand Paul (R-KY) reminded him that "Only Congress can declare war. You do not have our permission to go to war with Iran." What brought that on, you wonder? Paul asked Pompeo if the 2001 Authorization for Use of Military Force-- which still technically allows a president to send troops to fight anyone "responsible for the 9/11 attacks." Pompeo ducked the question, as though he were being questioned by a Democrat. He said that it would be something for "the lawyers" to decide but that there is "there is no question there is a connection between the Islamic Republic of Iran and Al Qaeda. Full Stop."

That worried Paul-- and rightfully so-- who said, "I can tell you, you have not been given power or authority by Congress to have war with Iran. So my hope is, I'm not arguing if IRGC is terrorists, my argument is you do not have permission Congress to go to war with Iran. It's the way the constitution was written. You want it, you have to come to us."

On Monday, the Trump administration accused the group, formed by an order of Ayatollah Khomeini as a branch of Iran's Armed Forces founded after the 1979 Iranian revolution, of not only facilitating, but perpetrating, terrorism. President Trump declared the designation an "unprecedented step" that "recognizes the reality that Iran is not only a State Sponsor of Terrorism, but that the IRGC actively participates in, finances, and promotes terrorism as a tool of statecraft."

The designation marks the first time that the U.S. has said a part of another government is a terrorist organization, according to the White House, and will expand the scope and scale of the administration's maximum pressure campaign on the Iranian regime. The White House emphasized the action "sends a clear message to Tehran that its support for terrorism has serious consequences."

If Trump decides to go ahead with a war against Iran anyway, do you think Congress would stand up to him? McConnell? Schumer? McCarthy? Pelosi? Rand Paul and Barbara Lee aren't going to be able to stop it alone.

And speaking of Pelosi, Shahid Buttar is the progressive Democrat challenging her this cycle. I asked him that very question. Here's what he told me this morning: "The military industrial complex that Eisenhower warned us to fear has unfortunately co-opted both of the major corporate political parties in the United States, which continue to march in lockstep with our criminal president despite the empty words of leaders mouthing resistance. And with so many Americans ignorant of our own nation's history, the parties have come together to drag We the American people, military families, and overlooked foreign communities from one neo-imperial war to another. Few remember how the U.S. effectively created the right wing theocracy in Iran, by installing and supporting a dictator for decades who inspired a populist backlash. If we merely walked our own talk of supporting democracy abroad, we would advance U.S. national security far more reliably than through any number of military interventions."

I also asked the same question to our old friend Doug Applegate, a strategic thinker, former congressional candidate and ex-Marine colonel. He didn't seem sanguine. "Given the ease of that the Bush Cheney cabal served up the fraud and misrepresentations to invade Iraq, Trump will have no hesitation to lie and misrepresent his way to a war with Iran. But the draft dodger will find out quickly that the Iranians will draw far more U.S. blood and treasure while yielding no prize. But the bigger question will be whether or not the Democrats can stop them given the way the Democrats play chess."

Alan Grayson added, sorrowfully, that "Because no one was held accountable for the last time that we were lied into a war (WMD), or the time before that (the Tonkin Gulf incident) or the time before that (Remember the Maine?) it very well might happen again."