On another quagmire - Elisabeth Bumiller in NYT:

‘A little more than 22 years ago, Washington was on edge as a president stood on the precipice of ordering an invasion of Baghdad. The expectation was that it would be a quick, triumphant “mission accomplished.” By the time the United States withdrew nearly nine years and more than 4,000 American and 100,000 Iraqi deaths later, the war had become a historic lesson of miscalculation and unintended consequences.’

(…)

‘“You’ve got to go to war with the president you have,” said William Kristol, a Never Trumper and editor at large of The Bulwark who was a prominent advocate of war with Iraq. “If you really think that Iran can’t have nuclear weapons, we have a chance to try to finish the job.” And once again the nation is waiting for a president to decide. “I may do it, I may not do it, nobody knows what I’m going to do,” Mr. Trump said Wednesday when asked about his thinking on striking Iranian nuclear facilities.’

(…)

‘John Bolton, a neoconservative who served as one of Mr. Trump’s first term national security advisers, was a big advocate for the war in Iraq, and is now a supporter of a U.S. attack on Iran.
“Bomb Fordo and be done with it,” he said on Wednesday. “I think this is long overdue.’’’

Read the article here.

Bolton: ‘Bomb Fordo and be done with it.’

Kristol: ‘You’ve got to go to war with the president you have.’

It’s 2003 all over again.

The good news is, no invasion this time.

The not so goods news is: there is no endgame.

But maybe, there is no endgame. Period.

To paraphrase Benjamin, just an intermission between two catastrophes.