Dispatches from the War Fronts: The Hot Air Force Flies High!

Dispatches from the War Fronts

Editors' Note: For decades the Spy brought you the thrilling adventures of the Hot Air Force, that doughy [Surely, doughty? – Ed.] band of neocons bravely promoting one or more wars that they cover from the comfort of their wife's Hamptons retreat or their Chevy Chase colonials.  They were instrumental in fomenting the Iraq War while evading any responsibility for the carnage caused in part by their relentless fact-free cheerleading for that bloody debacle.

In recent years, their ranks have thinned possibly because there was no longer any money or fame available for pimping for war.  In 2021, they rallied to attack poor old Joe Biden for deciding to end their 21-year-long war in Afghanistan when victory was, according to them, just around the corner, a decision that has proven to be entirely correct.

But the grizzled veterans of the Hot Air Force recently got the band of bullsh***ers back to together to assault their long-time enemy: Iran.  

Their target?  The truth that there is no way in hell to “win” a war against Iran.  

The Hot Air Force's damage assessment:

By War Correspondent Douglas MacArthur with Meta-Content Generator A.J. Liebling
 
After threatening wars against Canada, Greenland, Panama, and Mexico. wily ol' Commander Bone Spurs outsmarted them all by starting one with Iran.

And the Generals of the Hot Air Force, while too old and clumsy to actually fly the 37-hour bombing mission themselves, provided invaluable reinforcements of hot air to support our brave troops and their cowardly Commander-in-Chief.

Commandant of the Woman's Auxiliary Hot Air Corps Bari Weiss took time off from her brave struggles against 16-year-old trans girls trying to play field hockey with their friends to provide a meme so preposterous it left the rest of the Hot Air Corps sucking wind:

 

Yes, we certainly remember Churchill being dragged into the war between France and Germany because he got sick of listening to BBC coverage about the great success of the French Army.  Churchill, who, unlike Pol Potbelly, knew damn well from his service on the Western Front what a horrible bloody business war was, urged the world to deter German aggression by aiding European allies like France and Czechoslovakia after years of careful analysis of available intelligence about German bellicosity, not three hours of watching blow-dried gasbags preening over Israeli propaganda videos.

The comparison between Churchill, a courageous leader facing the most dreadful of consequences should Britain lose the war who venerated his precious military forces, and Trump, a demented coward with nothing to lose except his tee time and who called fallen soldiers “suckers” and “losers” was so louche and ludicrous that it won Bari her first coveted Cheney for relentless shoveling in the service of burying Republican incompetence.

Grizzled Hot Air Force Generalissimo Bretbug was in top form, sending our boys into harm's way against those nasty Iranians while he himself bravely fought in the front line of the smoked fish counter at Zabar's for the special dill-cured lox:

His argument, or perhaps more accurately Bibi Netanyahu's argument as faithfully channeled by Bretbug, is that Iran, unlike Russia, China, Pakistan, and North Korea, cannot be allowed to have a bomb because Iran is bad, bad, bad.

According to Generalissimo Bretbug, Iran is uniquely bad because it kills thousands of innocent civilians with a depraved indifference to human life, it oppresses with lethal violence minorities in areas it controls, it seeks to expand its influence over the entire Middle East by force of arms, and it is inherently an expansionist state, trying to impose its extremist religion on those of other faiths.

Can you imagine letting a country like that have nuclear weapons?  Actually, Bretbug can imagine it because we're describing Israel, which he has relentlessly supported.

Now no one is defending Iran as a model of good behavior.  Keeping its nuclear ambitions in check is an important national objective, which was accomplished by President Obama in 2015 with an internationally-backed verifiable agreement to stop Iran's nuclear enrichment program.  It worked, until it was dumped by Pol Potbelly with the avid support of the Hot Air Force, as former Secretary of State Anthony Blinken explained in a manner that should be legible to even the meanest intelligence:

So why was the strike a mistake?

Hegseth: We have closed the mine shaft gap!

First, it never should have come to this.  In 2015, the Obama administration, together with Britain, France, Germany, Russia, China and the European Union, reached agreement with Tehran on the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, or J.C.P.O.A. The nuclear deal effectively put Iran’s program to make fissile material, the fuel for a nuclear weapon, in a lockbox, with stringent procedures for monitoring the program. The deal pushed “breakout” — the amount of time it would take Iran to produce enough weapons-grade uranium for a single nuclear weapon — to at least one year. If Iran reneged on the agreement or refused to extend it when certain provisions expired after 15 years, we would know it and have plenty of time to respond, including, if necessary, militarily.

In 2018, President Trump tore up the agreement and replaced it with … nothing. In response, Iran accelerated its enrichment, quite likely reducing its breakout time to a matter of days or weeks. Mr. Trump, in essence, is now trying to put out a fire on which he poured gasoline.

Of course, dropping bombs is much more fun than actually solving security crises with careful, shrewd diplomacy, which is why Pol Potbelly isn't interested in that sort of thing. Also real non-demented honest President Obama did it so by the rules of white racists from Queens, it must have been bad.

Now the Pol Potbelly regime is engaged in a bitter disinformation battle to con us into believing that the attack on Iran did something to reduce the chance that Iran would be able to build a nuclear weapon.

The attack of lies is pursued on several fronts:  First, a frontal assault on the patriotism of anyone who dares to suggest that the attack may not have achieved its strategic objective by quoting stuff like intelligence reports or even asking uncomfortable questions, like the location and availability of Iran's over 270 kilograms  of 60%-enriched uranium, which it stockpiled after the U.S. breach of the JCPOA.

Second, a flanking maneuver by obfuscating the question.  Pol Potbelly and his cadres insist that because of their big strong attacks Iran's nuclear facilities have gone boom-boom.  But the issue isn't entirely or even mostly whether the targets attacked were damaged or destroyed; it's whether the nuclear program has been permanently destroyed or simply delayed for a matter of months or years.

The maneuver is complex because PP in the same incoherent remarks will make contradictory statements, stating that it is too soon to know and also that he knows that everything has been “obliterated.”  

Finally, the Trump Regime has called upon its staunch ally, Bibi Netanyahu, to weigh in with his own assessment, which is that his criminal trial [Surely, Iran's nuclear program? – Ed.] has been crippled for years. 

This three pronged attack on the truth was deployed on June 28 by Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, who concluded by awarding himself with the Order of the Jaeger Bomber with Budweiser Clusters.

So far to its credit the media has not uncritically agreed with Happy Hour Pete:

This is a better performance than during the Iraq War, when the media faithfully transmitted the lies and subterfuges of Hegseth's predecessor Donald Rumsfeld, who got away with whoppers for years before the press caught on that, despite his illusion of competence and gravitas, he was a bats*** crazy unrepentant lying war criminal in the Henry Kissinger tradition.  

But whatever their effect, if any, on Iran's nuclear capabilities, the Hot Air Force has achieved one huge victory: one of their own has graduated from writing about bombing to flacking for it as the senior civilian in charge of the Defense Department.

Back in 2018, Happy Hour Pete was a mere Hot Air Force Captain, like his comrades Johnny Walker and Jim Beam, inveighing against Iran on Saturday mornings when most folks are watching “Boomtown” [No one will get this reference – Ed.] :

He told the Israelis that he opposed the JCPOA on the entirely reasonable and well-thought-grounds that Iran would wipe out both Israel and the United States if it could.

Then those remarks were covered only by local Israeli media. 

Now he is in action, no longer from his Fox “News” hole, but from the Pentagon, striking fear into the hearts of our nation's enemies, namely the press and Democrats:

The ascension to the apex of bellicose bulls*** achieved by one of their own must gratify each of the keyboard and podcast warriors of the Hot Air Force.  And when Hegseth finally collapses in a pool of alcoholic stupor and hair gel, you can be sure that the surviving members of the Hot Air Force will all, all declare themselves eligible to succeed him.

In the meantime, the Hot Air Force has a stern warning for Greenland: You're next!

Good and Dead: Corrupt rutting entitled white male Giuliani scrotum bather and heroic Republican at 69

The obituary page of The Massachusetts Spy

By Luke Reschuss
Obituary Editor

It’s not every convicted and disgraced felon whose death is covered on Page A1 of the normally staid New York Times, but they did make an exception for bent cop, defiler of the memory of 9/11, and Rudy Giuliani Chianti-carrier Bernard Kerik, who died not a minute too soon at the age of 69.

Kerik and his assistants cavorting at his Ground Zero love shack

Or as the Times had to admit about a goombah who enjoyed years of softball coverage from that same newspaper, he “ f[e]ll from grace after he pleaded guilty to federal corruption and tax crimes.”

The lede reminded us that he was supposedly some sort of hero for being New York Police Commissioner on September 11, 2001, although what he did to achieve such veneration was not immediately apparent. Actually, he royally — we’ll get back to that.

But will the Times really begin Harvey Weinstein’s obit, to which we look forward with immense pleasure, with “Weinstein had a brilliant career as a gifted film producer and studio chief, but fell from grace after he was accused of raping and molesting dozens of women and finally convicted of a select handful of his crimes?” Maybe we shouldn’t give the Obituary team at the Times any ideas, but we are confident their Weinstein piece has been in the can for years.

At least the Times traced his meteoric rise to fame to his lamprey-like attachment to the taint of then New York Mayor and now disgraced liar and Borat cameo actor Rudy Giuliani, another revolting crooked white man whose death notice we look forward to every day:

A cocksure high school dropout with a black belt in karate, shaved head and bulging biceps, Mr. Kerik vaulted to senior public posts as a disciple of Rudolph W. Giuliani after serving as Mr. Giuliani’s bodyguard during his successful 1993 mayoral campaign.

Translating from the Times-speak, he was an unqualified bully who rose to fame and power in the years when meritocracy ruled, at least if you were a stupid uneducated white men with biceps that would impress fascist dweebs like Giuliani. As Archie Bunker sang, “Those were the days.”

If you look up “disciple” in the New York Times Dictionary you see:

Butt-boy
Bag carrier
Shill
Scrotal tongue-bather

There are in fact another 55 definitions, but you get the drift.

Despite his lack of qualifications, Giuliani, who needed to surround himself with compliant toadies (remind you of anyone?), appointed Kerik Police Commissioner.

As part of his failure to do his job, Kerik did nothing to prepare the city for the World Trade Center attack.  In particular he failed to provide a backup command center should the one Giuliani idiotically ordered built in the WTC be destroyed. Then as now there was a giant building on Flatbush Avenue in Brooklyn stuffed with communication links that would have served admirably, but Bernie was otherwise engaged. 

Nor did he do anything to improve communications among the various first responders, including FDNY and the Port Authority police. The price of his failure was paid in blood on 9/11.  

He did accompany Giuliani to ground zero that day, which was widely regarded as a tonic to the city’s morale but did nothing to make the city safer. After cashing in on his undeserved fame, he pocketed big bucks as a supposed private security expert for international dirtbags.

In the United States, this is known as “meritocracy.”

Speaking of unqualified white men taking care of their own, in 2004, in the midst of his hideous Iraq War debacle, President George W. Bush decided to accomplish another mission by naming Kerik to the Department of Homeland Security, a then-new Cabinet agency which at the time was devoted to protecting the homeland before it evolved to its current role as the agent of sadistic terror aimed at non-citizens.

Then the wheels came off the Kerikmobile:

In 2004, he was named by the president to head the Department of Homeland Security. But he withdrew one week later because, he said, he had employed an undocumented immigrant as a babysitter and neglected to pay payroll taxes.

That admission triggered several investigations.

It was revealed that while he was married with two children and living in the Riverdale section of the Bronx, he had rented an apartment in Battery Park City in Lower Manhattan to conduct an extramarital affair with Judith Regan, who had published his best-selling memoir. The apartment had originally been donated by a developer for use by rescue workers at the World Trade Center site.

It’s hard to decide the most appalling detail in this sordid tale. Was it that he was cheating on his wife with a bats**t crazy celebrity book editor too f***king incompetent to hold down a once-a-week gig on Fox “News?” Was it the parade of doxies he was banging?

Our vote goes to the fact that he was doing all of his tomcatting in an apartment overlooking the mass grave of Ground Zero donated for the purpose of overseeing recovery efforts there. But Kerik turned it into his personal Love Shack.

But that’s not what ended his career. The white goombahs from Staten Island probably loved that he was getting his rocks off with a parade of bimbos while gazing out at menials toiling in the hot sun to rebuild the pit of death. 

With white men from the boroughs, the impunity is the point.

Reaming Judith Regan in an apartment intended to aid 9/11 recovery wasn’t a felony. But:

In 2009, he pleaded guilty to two counts of tax fraud, one count of making a false statement on a loan application and five counts of making false statements to the federal government while being vetted for senior positions. He was sentenced to four years in prison and served three.

It probably should be mentioned that white men able to afford good lawyers don’t plead guilty to multiple felonies unless they are, to use the technical legal term, guilty as s***. 

And that’s where the story ends: a mediocre white man is undone by his own greed and arrogance, right?

You know the answer. 

 Like so many bent mediocre white men, he hitched his wagon to their ego-ideal and overload, the insanely arrogant crooked grifter now engaged in destroying what is left of our democracy. For his efforts Kerik was pardoned by his fellow New York area felon and repaid President Tiny Toadstool by supporting his effort to overthrow the government of the United States on January 6, 2021.

Bernie was reported to have said he was proud of his career with the exception of his “mistakes” and “lapses of judgment.”

White men always grade themselves on a curve. It’s called affirmative action.

Just imitating his role model, the king of corrupt white slugs

Kerik’s sordid but ultimately inconsequential career might be scarcely worth of notice, except that it serves as a tidy example of the rot that has destroyed our country.

The toxic mix of arrogance, stupidity, entitlement and unearned white grievance that propelled Kerik his whole life is now strangling our lives and liberties.

Kerik’s belief that he was entitled to use a donated Ground Zero apartment as his own Playboy Mansion to trade on his notoriety for nookie is no different than the President’s belief that he is entitled to rape women, rob us blind, and destroy every democratic institution in America.

Every single Republican, even the supposedly female ones, now goes along with this campaign of sadism in the aid of white male entitlement.

And the same media who built up louses and drunks like Kerik and Giuliani as heroes for doing jack s*** are now doing the same for infinitely more dangerous lunatics like the current President and his ex, Ketamine Leon.

The price for the failure to stand up to these bent evil men is already being paid by children in Sudan starving to death and sickened by preventable disease thanks to the illegal dismantling of USAID, by noncitizens illegally asported to a foreign concentration camp, and by future generations, if any, who will live in a less safe, habitable, and healthy world.

We have all become accustomed to living now in Bernie Kerik’s world of incompetence, depravity, corruption, and white male entitlement.  If you can call this living.