Cogito Ergo Non Serviam
Kegsbreath Lies to Congress
Secretary of War Crimes and unreformed alcoholic Pete Kegsbreath testified yesterday to the House Armed Services Commitee and today before the Senate counterpart. He is combative in an arrogant but ignorant way, smugly denying reality. He pitched a fit over the Iran War being called a "quagmire" mainly because it has not gone on more than a couple of months. He said the Democrats in Congress are a bigger threat to America than the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps, which is surprising since the Democrats have not launched any missiles or drones. Worst of all, he cannot keep his story straight about the Iranian nuclear research. All in all, he is an embarrassment to the nation and the administration. His trial when all of this is over should prove amusing.
Ostensibly, this pair of hearings is to help Congress understand why the Defense Department (which Mr. Kegsbreath insists is called the Department of War) needs a 40% increase in its budget to around $1.5 trillion. There is no reason for that increase militarily, and economically, America cannot afford it. He wants his budget to be almost five times what his Chinese counterpart has, and China has the second biggest defense budget in the world.
Rather than make the case for this spending, he has decided to stonewall and obfuscate while aiming for soundbites that will please his boss when the latter watches it on Fox News. He was even cautioned by the Republican chair to behave better, which he failed to do anyway.
In all of it, however, it is clear that the Iran war is a huge problem, and his job is to paper over the cracks so that no one notices this side of the midterms. He is failing.
The Independent noted:
Democrat Congressman Adam Smith questioned why the President and the Defense Secretary had justified the 2026 attack on Iran as due to an "imminent threat" of Iranian nuclear weapons when they had often trumpeted 2025’s Operation Midnight Hammer strikes as having already "obliterated" the Middle East nation’s nuke program.
Hegseth suggested that, despite the Midnight Hammer strikes, the Iranians had still not given up their nuclear ambitions.
Well, this is irrelevant bullshit. The simple truth is that Iran has around 450 kilos of highly enriched uranium (60% U235, not enough to go boom). If their centifuges were "obliterated," then that 60% will never increase even it Iran digs it all out of the bunker it is in. And US bunker busting bombs cannot penetrate the mountains under which Iran was operating its nuclear program. So, which is it? Does Iran have the capacity to make the HEU weapons grade? Or was that capacity destroyed in June? Either he was lying then or he is lying now.
As for nuclear ambitions, there is no way to prevent another country from having ambitions. This week, the US administration sought to pressure the UK and suggested Argentinian ambitions with regard to the Falkland Islands might be encouraged in Washington. The UK beat the bejesus out of the Argentina during the 1982 war. Argentina has not given up its claim, but its ambitions are going nowhere.
Worst of all, and this the secretary does not realize, the two attacks on Iran in the last year have cemented in the minds of the ayatollahs that Iran needs a nuclear bomb to deter the US and Israel. The one hope here is that the Iranian military will guide policy so that closing the Strait of Hormuz becomes the preferred weapon of mass destruction. It is superior to a nuke in a couple of ways. First, it can be used without fear of annihilation, something that cannot be said of a fission bomb. Second, the threat is credible because it has already been employed.
Mr. Kegsbreath is doing Iran's work for it through his arrogant incompetence. It was on full display this week. This journal believes the appropriate response is a reduced defense budget.
© Copyright 2026 by The Kensington Review, Jeff Myhre, PhD, Editor. No part of this publication may be reproduced without written consent. Produced using Ubuntu Linux.
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