The Swine Emperor’s Corrupt Crusader Cabinet

Editor’s Note: my only comment here is to offer a brief apology for how long it has been since my last article. Although I started working on this piece the day after swine emperor Trump named John “Bomb Iran” Bolton his new national security advisor, a couple of minor personal issues and the sheer volume of research necessary to complete this Deep Dive has caused a significant, unforeseen delay in delivering it to you; hopefully you’ll find the completed essay worth the wait by the time you’ve finished reading it.

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“Poverty, urban problems and social progress are generally ignored when the drums of war become a national obsession” – Dr Martin Luther King Jr.

 

Hail, hail the gang’s all here; that floundering fascist fuck has actually done it and woe indeed awaits the poor bastards trapped outside when the now-inevitable shit rain falls. In the blackened Beltway heart of Amerikkka, the other shoe finally dropped last week when globally-loathed US swine emperor Donald Trump officially announced his plan to replace rumored “adult in the room” baby killer H.R. McMaster with a live hand grenade wearing a Yosemite Sam novelty mustache.

Barring an unforeseen miracle, bomb-lobbing sociopath John Bolton will become Herr Donald’s new National Security Advisor; an objectively homicidal choice that comes on the jackbooted heels of Trump’s also-objectively homicidal decision to promote “Iron Mikey” Pompeo and “Bloody” Gina Haspel to head up the State Department and CIA respectively. With these additions, our rapist-in-chief is assembling a bloodthirsty crusader war cabinet that will likely rewind US foreign policy to an era of unrestrained imperial aggression unknown since Hank Kissinger used a body count in the millions to lure Hollywood starlets into the Lincoln bedroom. Perhaps more importantly, it’s now clear to even the most moronic American media minions that Trump intends to prop up his festering, leprous presidency by plunging the pig empire into further warfare; the only questions remaining all have mind-fuckingly terrible answers – questions like when, where and how many wars are we talking about here?

The stage is set and the die has been cast; there will be no avoiding another atrociously reckless, unarguably moronic war once Trump has surrounded himself with blood soaked corpse-mongers who share his genocidal fantasies of limitless American imperial power. So just who are these architects of death and destruction now propping up the swine emperor’s desperately militant regime? Let’s look a six important members of Herr Donald’s corrupt crusader cabinet and where they stand on relevant foreign policy issues like Amerikkkan relations with North Korea, Iran, Syria, Israel and Russia:

 

Nikki Haley, US Ambassador to the UN

More Baghdad Bob than Joseph Goebbels, Haley is the pig empire’s disingenuous mouthpiece at the UN; a position Bolton himself once held for murderous war criminal and noted hero of #TheResistance, George W Bush. A rapidly rising star in fanatical warmongering conservative circles, what Haley lacks in cunning she more than makes up for in belligerence and a willingness to shamelessly lie on camera as part of the US Junta’s efforts to demonize it’s implied “enemies” on an international stage.

In her short but utterly horrifying tenure as The Mouth of Sauron, the mendacious American ambassador has already racked up her very own embarrassing “yellowcake from Niger” moment while threatening military aggression against Syria, North Korea and arguably, Iran. Equally important but far less often discussed is Haley’s very public hostility towards supposed Trump ally Russia; including direct accusations that the Kremlin is protecting Syria from justice for unconfirmed chemical weapons attacks, controlling violent separatist rebels in Ukraine and just poisoned a former double-agent spy on British soil. Although there’s little evidence she’s a raging anti-Muslim bigot, Haley’s vociferous and at times sycophantic support for all things apartheid-Israel unquestionably informs her ongoing unhinged crusade to justify regime change in longtime mutual foe Iran.

A proud product of notoriously corrupt South Carolina politics, the former Governor left behind a long trail of pay for play scandals when she joined Herr Donald’s administration and just in case you were wondering – yes, this gibbering rage muppet has future presidential ambitions.

 

Mike Pompeo, (impending) US Secretary of State

Although the return of America’s favorite death-worshiping bomb walrus has pushed Pompeo’s promotion out of the headlines, swine emperor Trump’s ominous decision to put the murderous meathead “Congressman from Koch” in charge of the State Department is no less cause for grave concern. It is of course possible that the notably odious Pompeo won’t survive another Senate confirmation hearing, but very recent history suggests you’d be a fool to bet the farm on it – and that, is nauseating news.

Speaking bluntly, Pompeo is a fundie zealot Islamophobic whackjob who emphatically supports keeping the human rights violation factory at Gitmo open and almost certainly still loves himself a whole mess of torture; which naturally screams “top US diplomat” to precisely fucking no one except Herr Donald and the right wing reactionary government of Israel. A literal holy crusader, the now-former CIA director slums around with anti-Muslim hatemongers and directly compared the Islamic Republic of Iran to ISIS as recently as last October. Unsurprisingly, Pompeo has suggested bombing the shit out of Iran in the past and he seems pretty damn keen to rip up the Iran nuclear deal; an act that would almost certainly lead the pig empire into another genocidal forever war in the Middle East. Despite his fanatical commitment to starting a mindbogglingly stupid war with the Islamic Republic however, Pomepo also finds room in his shriveled lizard heart to not-so-subtly advocate for regime change in both Syria and North Korea.

While it’s unclear if this revanchist boil on the ass of humanity has designs on the Oval Office, Pompeo’s already notable ambition and slavish obeisance to the Kochtopus political empire ensures that whatever his future nefarious plans are, they’ll be well funded. Finally, like most surviving Tea Party mutants, Iron Mikey also has a colorful history of Russophobic scaremongering; which despite some initial spineless waffling, has quietly continued unabated during his service as Trump’s CIA director.

 

John Bolton, (impending) National Security Advisor

Naturally, the most obvious question here is “how the fuck is John Bolton even real?” Conspiracy theorist, radical nationalist, unhinged war criminal, dark money manipulator, a bloodthirsty apparatchik whose foreign policy positions can best be described as “bomb literally everyone” that gets in the way; Bolton is a essentially a rejected Bond villain granted flesh through dark and dangerous magics. An immortal carrion feeder with neocon roots that stretch back to the Reagan administration, Bolton has been a key shit disturber in infamous GOP scandals like the Iran-Contra affair, the 2000 Florida recount swindle and George W. Bush’s ever-expanding Axis of Evil propaganda. A shameless liar and unabashed architect of the pig empire’s genocidal 2003 invasion of Iraq, Bolton has always been a napalm-chucking arsonist on a crusade to burn down half the goddamn planet – we are after all talking about a man who sabotaged a bio weapons conference, withdrew the US from the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty and gleefully pulled American support for the International Criminal Court.

Time it would seem, has done little to satiate bloodthirsty Bolton’s ravenous appetite for the apocalypse. On the subject of North Korea, the Witch King of Turtle Bay still favors blood, bombs and regime change over sanctions or even seriously attempting to negotiate for peace; a position arguably more hostile than Bolton’s deranged DPRK rhetoric while serving as Bush’s shrieking attack hound at the UN. Not content to start beef with only one nuclear power in Asia, Bolton has also advocated for somehow forcing Beijing to depose the Kim dynasty in North Korea, blamed China for not reigning in Pakistan and suggested the US offer military support for Chinese-coveted Taiwan. A nuanced but committed anti-Shia Islamophobic crusader with cozy ties to an anti-Muslim think tank and numerous openly racist shitheel zealots, Bolton’s solution for the pig empire’s manufactured powder keg in Syria is more bombs, regime change and carving the nation up for his Sunni friends. An old school Cold Warrior, Bolton’s position on Syria is almost certainly influenced by his longstanding saber-rattling about Assad-allied Russia and its President Vladimir Putin; including a dire public warning to the swine emperor about negotiating with Putin and very recent demands for a “stronger response” to the alleged Russian chemical attack in the UK.

As soul-crushingly horrible as all of that is however, what truly makes Bolton’s unholy resurrection so ominous is his endless lifelong, fanatical quest to completely destroy the Islamic Republic of Iran; a nation which of course just happens to be a Russian ally. An extremely vocal opponent of the Iran nuclear deal, Herr Donald’s incoming advisor has engaged in a Javert-esque campaign to unravel the agreement at every possible turn; an objectively homicidal activity that again, could definitely lead a real as fuck war. Not that this Faustian fuckwit would mind much; Bolton’s idea of diplomatic relations with Iran consists of yet more bombing, followed by immediate regime change and putting a cult-like former terrorist group in charge of the country afterwards. Or at least, what’s left of it when the smoke settles because in 2009, Bolton went full Dr. Strangelove and casually implied that US-ally Israel should literally fucking nuke Iran. Speaking of Israel, would is surprise you at all to learn that hardline conservative Jewish Americans and the right wing reactionary Netanyahu government both think “Body Bag” Bolton is the dreamiest thing since illegal settlements? If the former Ambassador’s repeated and repugnant public defense of Israeli war crimes is any indication, the feeling is quite mutual.

Finally, it bears mentioning that Bolton is involved with several noxious neocon think tanks, controls his own hyper-conservative SuperPAC and has long-harbored grandiose presidential ambitions. Like a blood tick with a bottomless stomach, Fuckface Von Clownstick’s newest advisor is a demonic pest that just won’t go away.

 

“Bloody” Gina Haspel, (impending) CIA Director

After reading the above entry for Pompeo, it might be tempting to assume that virtually any replacement for “Iron Mikey” as CIA director would be a net positive; especially if that replacement is a woman who happens to look like a middle school librarian. In the case of “Bloody” Gina Haspel, the Thailand torture tyrant however, this assumption would of course be completely fucking wrong. Despite repugnant attempts by ghoulish Intel spooks to whitewash her horrifying record, all any crude facsimile of a human being should need to know about Haspel is that she ran a secret CIA black site during the Bush-era War on Terror, she destroyed video evidence that almost certainly implicated her in torture and she should be rotting in fucking prison, not preparing for a confirmation hearing to become Director of the CIA. To suggest that Haspel was only following orders and that she believed torture was legal at the time not only invites a furious retort triggering Godwin’s law, but it also misses the goddamn forest for the trees entirely – evidence that Haspel is a heinously amoral little Eichmann who would obey a sociopath’s clearly monstrous order to commit war crimes because some other soulless reptile declared it “legal” is the bloody problem, not an excuse.

Although Gina’s largely anonymous rise through the secretive bureaucracy of the Central Intelligence Agency makes it difficult to pinpoint her political positions on key foreign policy issues, what we do know is that Haspel is a maniacal sadist with extremely questionable ethics who views Russia as a “dangerous adversary.”

 

John F. Kelly, Chief of Staff

Quite frankly, John F Kelly is ten pounds of bigot imperialist monkey shit stuffed haphazardly into a five pound gunny sack; a fact that Trump may well be aware of if recent rumors that he considered replacing Kelly with literally himself are true. At this point the festering rot of Kelly’s open moral turpitude is a matter of public record; as evidenced by his racist smear against a black Congresswoman and his stomach-churning deceptions to protect a known goddamn wife-beater on Trump’s staff. Kelly has also defended Herr Donald’s obscene Muslim ban, employed his own dead son to protect Trump while the president bickered with the grieving widow of a dead solider and called unregistered migrants too “lazy” to sign up for DACA.

Less frequently explored however is the reality that the retired general has literally always been a reactionary piece of shit who is wholly fucking unsuitable for government; while running the US Southern Command, mad-cracker Kelly asserted that undocumented migrants represented an “existential threat” for Amerikkka because smuggling routes could be exploited by terrorists to deliver “weapons of mass destruction” to the United States. A vociferous proponent of the objectively failed War on Drugs, General Kelly also publicly praised the “resolve” of the brutal US-puppet regime in Colombia for its fig-leafed genocidal rights violations conducted in the name of stabilizing the country and combating narcotics. Have I even mentioned that this malevolent little maggot vigorously fought to keep the immoral US terror prison in Guantanamo Bay open yet? While we’re on the horrifying subject of Gitmo, doesn’t the fact that Kelly responded to a hunger strike at America’s most infamous prison camp with “force-feeding, solitary confinement, and rubber bullets” make you wonder precisely what the retired baby killer meant when Kelly swore he would “absolutely” abide by US laws prohibiting the use of waterboarding and other forms of torture? After all, one woman’s definition of torture is just another corpse merchant’s idea of a great fucking day at the office and what exactly does “legal” mean in this context anyway?

Like most of Trump’s military minions, Kelly has publicly pontificated on fighting “radical Islamic terrorism” and has a historical soft spot for casually conspiratorial warmongering against Iran. Otherwise, Kelly’s foreign policy positions remain something of a mystery; although his willingness to uncomfortably track more or less alongside the swine emperor on issues like Syria, North Korea and to a lesser degree Russia hardly suggests he’ll be a voice of dissent in Herr Donald’s new war cabinet. As in the case of Haspel, you could argue that an ass-kissing toady like Kelly doesn’t explicitly belong on this Un-Wanted Poster of corrupt crusader war pigs because his role as Chief of Staff doesn’t officially involve murdering brown people for “democracy.” This seems irrelevant in the Klepto Kaiser’s broken kingdom of madness however and for now, Kelly not only controls access to Trump by everyone else on this list, but daily boot-licking also grants Col. Jessup the ear of a moronic, reactionary president known to agree with whoever speaks to him last. If Kelly does indeed survive King Leer’s latest purge, he will remain roughly on par with Mad Dog Mattis and John Bolton in terms of influence over Trump’s circus of destruction, which unfortunately makes his political opinions a matter of global goddamn importance.

 

James “Mad Dog” Mattis, US Secretary of Defense

All of which leaves us with the beloved final boss of the supposed “adults in the room” clique in the swine emperor’s militant fascist government; retired General James “Mad Dog” Mattis, the Butcher of Fallujah. In the ongoing centrist hagiography, the erudite, extremely literate former Obama general is the warrior poet embodiment of neoliberal myth-making about Amerikkkan military power; a rational, patriotic servant of the pig empire who wins when he fights, but only fights when he must. Indeed, according to highly respected, establishment media manipulators on both the “center left” and “center right” – the reasoned wisdom provided by Mattis is now the only goddamn thing keeping Herr Donald from blowing up the world.

The problem with this narrative of course is that it’s unadulterated horseshit – and not just because Jim Mattis is literally a murderous fucking war criminal who has helped cover up the crimes of other war criminals and has actively demonstrated his respect for the chain of command outweighs his squishy moral principles. The awful goddamn truth however is that while he’s clearly the more intelligent lackey, “General Chaos” is every bit the boot-licking Trump enabler that John F Kelly is. From his pathetic attempts to justify the swine emperor’s proposed military parade to completely reversing his position on nuclear weapons in support of Herr Donald’s terrifying if hardly novel Nuclear Posture Review and his cowardly capitulation on Trump’s bigoted transgender military ban for new recruits; Mad Dog has gleefully surrendered his own credibility to protect and promote Darth Hater.

On matters of foreign policy, the mendacious Mattis is more subtle, but the vomit-inducing good cop/bad cop routine he performs with Trump is no less effective in supporting Downmarket Mussolini’s global military machinations:

• Despite glowing op-eds and empty platitudes about diplomacy, Mattis has readily supported and at times even exceeded Donny Dumbfuck’s open belligerence towards the DPRK; including telling US troops that “storm clouds are gathering” over the Korean Peninsula, declaring that “the threat of a nuclear attack from North Korea was accelerating” and describing the Kim Jong-un government as a “threat to the entire world.“

• In Syria, Jimmy Two-Face has demurred at evidence of sarin gas attacks and brushed aside talk of toppling Bashir al-Assad while simultaneously absolving a lethal US airstrike against Syrian forces as “self defense” and repeatedly accusing the Assad government of executing or planning other chemical weapons attacks. It was Mattis who masterminded Trump’s homicidal cruise missile attack on a Syrian airbase last April and it was Mattis who bragged about destroying Syrian planes while downplaying the mind-fucking risk involved in Herr Donald’s impulsive tantrum. Finally, you can sure as shit bet that US forces aren’t illegally remaining in Syria against the wishes of both Russia and the Assad government without the Secretary of Defense’s blessing.

• Although he has recently talked about ending the sixteen year long ongoing pharmaceutical supply clusterfuck that is the pig empire’s war in Afghanistan, Mattis also supported Trump’s decisions to send in more Amerikkkan storm troopers and drop the “Mother of All Bombs.” When dragged before Congress to defend sending more baby-killers to fight an objectively hopeless war on behalf of loathsome allies, Mattis actually fucking evoked 9/11 to justify the decision and has since enthusiastically repeated his earlier absurd comments that some type of victory in Afghanistan is still possible.

• Mattis also gave the swine emperor a free public handie after Trump tried to blame the Pentagon for his botched Yemen-raid-turned-massacre and has employed his gravitas as an esteemed corpse farmer to run interference for the Trump administration’s sloth-like response to a fatal ambush of US soldiers in Niger.

Looking past hard talk and colorful nicknames, the duty-bound Mattis is clearly a corrupt presidential puppet who actually empowers and enables America’s own Clown Prince of Slime. This fact alone should silence all meandering media chatter about the Secretary of Defense “holding the line” of reason against warmongering crusaders like Pompeo and Bolton; frankly it is the various issues this terrible trio of blood-soaked ghouls already agree on that threaten to plunge the pig empire into a potentially world-destroying war.

For example “Mad Dog” Mattis’s belligerent rhetoric about Russia, a country his Pentagon is currently fighting-by-proxy on two separate fronts, is both firmly in line with the rest of Herr Donald’s corrupt crusader cabinet and a longstanding matter of public fucking record; indeed, his willingness to confront Putin is often cited by pro-war lackeys in corporate media as evidence of the general’s purported ability to check Trump’s worst impulses. While partisans, pundits and propagandists continue to speculate about the swine emperor’s loyalty to Russia, his chief minister of war has recently accused the Kremlin of attempted murder on UK Soil, laid responsibility for the Skripal poisoning on Vladdy Putin’s shoulders and declared that Russia was attempting to divide “the West.” As far back as his confirmation hearing, Mattis has been eager to escalate a mindbogglingly stupid new Cold War with Russia and after roughly fourteen months of machinations, General Chaos may have finally succeeded in that suicidal endeavor.

Where Mattis is really likely to find common ground with Trump’s new maladjusted murderbot minions, is on the recently popular subject of “regime change” in the Russian-allied, Islamic Republic of Iran. This is naturally because “Mad Dog” the Marine general has openly harbored a multi-decade hard-on for punishing Iran due to its alleged role in the 1983 Beirut barracks bombing; although few hagiographers seem to remember, it was actually Mattis’s hardline, militant stance on Iran during negotiations for what would ultimately become the Iran Nuclear Deal that lead then-president Obama to unceremoniously hand Mattis his gold watch in 2013.

While Mattis has since defended the deal as “strategically important” for the pig empire, he has also spent pretty much his entire goddamn time as Secretary of Defense engaging in open warmongering against Iran; including repeatedly calling Tehran the world’s “biggest state sponsor of terrorism” and reportedly bringing the US to the brink of war with the nation mere days after Trump’s inauguration. Although recent events and his role as Nitwit Napoleon’s better half have supposedly softened Mattis’s hostility, this is just more centrist myth-making bullshit; Iran was mentioned by name as a “rogue regime” in 2018 US National Defense Strategy, Mattis spent much of March leveling accusations against the Islamic Republic and the Secretary of Defense is still clearly opposed to the continued existence of the government in Tehran. Unsurprisingly, Mattis’s anti-Iran positions have made him a longtime favorite in apartheid settler state Israel and if his comments on the matter are any indication, the feeling is pretty mutual, with some arguably not-so-minor quibbling.

Finally, although Mattis denied considering a run for president in 2016, fat-cat “Never Trump” Republican donors reportedly tried to talk him into it; at a minimum, his popular support among pro-baby killer Americans and the ongoing mythology afforded to “Mad Dog” by the corporate centrist press would likely make him a strong contender if he did decide to toss his helmet into the ring.

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The simple, even obvious truth in all of this is that the Klepto Kaiser clearly intends to start a major war that will make murderous “moderate” conservatives and liberal pig empire apologists alike openly long for former President Obama’s lethal imperialist bullying against defenseless hospitals and wedding parties. Although many ponderous pundits still humping the decaying corpse of the “Russiagate” scandal seem inclined to focus on how John Bolton affects Trump’s protracted intimidation dance with North Korea, I think a careful examination of the evidence strongly suggests that this is a clumsy feint by an Amerikkkan war machine that clearly has its lustful eyes on “regime change” in Iran.

After numerous outrageous accusations and bellicose rhetoric that began literally days after the swine emperor’s inauguration, it seems highly fucking unlikely that Herr Donald has accidentally assembled a frothing pack of rabid Iran hawks who universally support regime change and (mostly) have strong ties to the anti-Iran reactionary Netanyahu government in Israel. Nor do I believe that it’s a coincidence that Trump’s corrupt crusader war cabinet is now chock full of anti-Russian hardliners just as the swine emperor openly moves into a new Cold War; whatever the pig president’s intentions might have been when he took office, the bloodthirsty Trump administration surely knows that a war with Iran means escalating an already-brewing conflict with Vladimir Putin’s Russia.

America’s Nitwit Napoleon desperately wants a war. North Korea has nuclear weapons, Iran does not. Iran has the world’s largest natural gas field, North Korea does not. Frankly, that’s the kind of math even a militant, myopic moron like Donald Trump can understand; res ipse loquitur.

 

• Nina Illingworth