I should not let myself be distracted, I should not let myself be distracted…

A couple of weeks ago four U.S. servicemen were killed in Niger.  Two were named Johnson, one black, one white.  One was named Black; he was white.  Why they were killed in an unarmored vehicle in Niger, although the military is still actively investigating the weeks’ old the incident,  is obvious — fighting a secret worldwide war on TERROR.  Duh!  

We must, we are told, wage a relentless and borderless war against TERROR and be eternally vigilant until we have killed all of those violent extremists who hate us enough to resort to TERROR.  Our leaders have kept us all aware of this terrible, uh, fact since the World Trade Towers came down and the Pentagon took a hit in the fall of 2001.  

The WAR ON TERROR, although plainly impossible to win with military force alone, has been used as the excuse for a lot of inexcusable mischief, mayhem, murder and manipulation, but that is another story for another time.

The body of one of the four dead Americans, Sgt. La David Johnson, was apparently not found until 48 hours or so after the ambush.   When the four dead Americans were eventually sent back to the U.S., their coffins draped in American flags, the widows, at least in the case of La David Johnson’s wife, Myeshia, were not allowed to see the dead bodies inside the coffins.   Maybe it was because they were beyond recognition, I don’t know.    La David Johnson’s widow cried that she was prevented from seeing so much as his hand, to be sure it was really him in the box.

Our president called the widow of La David Johnson.  A condolence call, of a certain style.  The widow was apparently not consoled by the call.   Our president called the widow a liar, claiming angrily that he had fucking consoled her.  (In fairness to the president, he claimed only that he’d been very respectful, that she was lying about him not remembering her husband’s name and that a “wacky” congresswoman who’d SECRETLY listened in on the call was a fucking liar). *

He had his four star general Chief-of-Staff John Kelly make a long televised speech, during which Kelly lamented the lost dignity of our society, the mistreatment of women included, how nothing is sacred anymore.  Kelly then surrendered the shaky moral high ground he was shifting on, claiming that the self-aggrandizing Democratic politician listening in to the president’s call to the widow had been eavesdropping, that the nosy Representative had deliberately distorted the president’s words of condolence (Kelly neglected to mention that the widow and the representative were in a car together, or that the call was on the widow’s speakerphone, creating the impression that the Florida representative had a sinister ability to wiretap at will), was an “empty barrel”, talking shit, a lying partisan viciously trying to politicize a tragedy, someone who had falsely claimed credit for securing funding for a new FBI headquarters in South Florida.   

(Although, in fairness to everybody, and not that it’s a gigantic detail in the overall hideous picture — except coming from the mouth of a general speaking in the context of respect for the fallen, and perhaps to the family and colleagues of Jerry Dove — the second murdered FBI agent referenced by Kelly was named Jerry Dove, not Duke as Kelly said.  You’d think somebody on the general’s staff could have hit Google to fact-check the speech before Kelly gave it, wrote the correct names of the two dead heroes on a card for him.  No attention to detail in President ADHD’s post-reality administration. SAD!). [1] [2]

The widow was interviewed shortly after Kelly’s news conference.  She explained that the congresswoman, a long time mentor to the family, had been in the car when Trump called and had reported the president’s remarks accurately.   

Our thin-skinned, bottomlessly needy president attacked Myeshia Johnson vigorously on Twitter for not being grateful for something that had been very difficult for him.   He might as well have called her a lying cunt.   We would expect no less from the man, but still.

*

Adroitly done, Lyin’ Don. 

Facts?