20 March—A correction. Of sorts. Maybe. Yesterday’s disquisition reported: “Israel confirms that the U.S. helped coordinate the attack on the South Pars gas field. But that doesn’t mean Trump or Hegseth had any inkling of what was going on.” Well, after publication, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu confirmed the Trump-Hegseth insistence that Israeli had acted alone when it hit the Iranian gas compound.

But informed and trustworthy sources still insist that the United States and Israel have in fact been and are coordinated on all targets. And given the way Netanyahu sucks up to Trump and the tendency of both men to bend the truth, as it were, the informed and trustworthy sources are clearly more credible.

On the other hand, Netanyahu maintains that Trump has asked him to hold off on future attacks. And that’s entirely credible and plausible for any number of reasons, not the least of which is all the money being thrown at a poorly conceived and incompetently strategized illegal non-war the United States should never have got involved in.

That’s because, while there are non-binding memorandums of understanding and other agreements between friends and BFFs (including but not limited to Trump and Netanyahu), the United States doesn’t have anything like a legally binding mutual defense pact with Israel that requires the U.S. to defend Israel if attacked.

Yet Trump and Hegseth are now asking Congress for another $200 billion because, as screw-up warlord Hegseth put it yesterday, “It takes money to kill bad guys.” No shit, Sherlock, it takes money to do anything these days. Although there’s no denying that the autocratic mullahs of Iran are indeed bad guys, is it really the responsibility of the United States to kill them? And, judging from history, isn’t it likely they’d only be replaced by other bad guys? In all events, Israel has shown it’s far better at actually targeting and killing bad guys while the U.S. has consistently shown it’s better—but not necessarily far better—at killing innocent civilians and destroying whatever it can.

As for taking money to kill bad guys, one wonders how much it would cost to kill . . .