Vallas, Paris and the 20th anniversary of the Iraq War.

This weekend marks the twentieth anniversary of the start of the Iraq War.

It was a war based on two (at least two) lies.

The first lie was that Iraq and Saddam Hussein were somehow connected to the attack on the towers.

The second lie was that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction.

As a result of these lies the United States started a war that caused 5,000 U.S. deaths, more than 32,000 wounded, at least a quarter of a million Iraqi civilians dead at a cost of trillions of dollars.

All for nothing.

I think of this as U.S. political leaders talk today about their skepticism towards China’s efforts to find a way to end the war in Ukraine.

Where was their skepticism when we needed it?

Meanwhile…

In France thousands of workers have taken to the streets to protest French President Emmanuel Macron’s attack on earned pensions.

Macron may face votes of no-confidence today.

In Chicago, public employees also face pension underfunding but not only are there no protests in the streets of Chicago, it is barely a topic of discussion in the current mayoral campaign between County Commissioner and former teacher Brandon Johnson and former CPS CEO Paul Vallas.

It should be a big topic of discussion.

Vallas’ pension theft makes Macron look like a petit escroc.

As I have written here earlier, Paul Vallas is the architect of the current Chicago teacher pension debt even as Vallas has the chutzpah to say he left Chicago with the teacher pensions fully funded.

What utter bullshit.