Jim Himes

But nonetheless, if you go with the Secretary of State's explanation, which he's repeated multiple times, we were passive and reactive bystanders in the single most serious thing that we can do, i.e.

get involved in war and a war in the Middle East.

And I don't need to punctuate that point because we all just watched

the dignified transfer of the remains of a young soldier, Sergeant Pennington, who was with us a week ago and who is no longer with us.

And that just punctuates why this is probably the most serious decision a president can make, taken completely unseriously.

First of all, I don't spend a lot of time with Donald Trump, but I can only imagine what it's like to be in his war council, right?

Because my suspicion is that every hour or so, the rationale and the emotional temperature and the objectives change.

You just need to watch Donald Trump in a news conference to know that that is most likely true.

So my best guess is that...

The president realized that Iran was imminent danger notwithstanding, because that explanation, of course, is both wrong, a lie, and insane, considering that Iran, as vicious and as dangerous as they are, are

weaker today, relatively speaking, than they have been for a very long time because of the 12-day War of June and because of the bombing of their nuclear infrastructure.

My guess is that Donald Trump, probably listening to Prime Minister Netanyahu, who for 40 years

this has been his primary objective, decided that he could secure a role in history.

And my guess is that the Secretary of State, and I do emphasize that these are my guesses because I wasn't in the room, my guess is that the Secretary of State was doing a lot of backfilling and not particularly well.

Again, his explanation makes it sound as though we are reactive and passive bystanders rather than a superpower.

Yeah, I obviously got to be a little careful about talking about said reports if they exist, given my role on the Intelligence Committee.

But one way to think about this is, duh, the United States has been making no secret of its effort

halting though it may be to help the Ukrainians.

And you can imagine what Vladimir Putin thinks now that we have a substantial portion of our military capability exposed in the region.

So, I mean, I'll just, I'll leave it at that.