John Kerry's Sad Circle to Deceit

Though it is surely possible that Russian special forces are operating in eastern Ukraine -- despite the Russian government's denials -- Kerry has presented no evidence to prove his point. Indeed, the evidence that his State Department has put forth, as in the Russian photos, turned out to be bogus.

Yet, what has gripped Official Washington and the U.S. news media is a full-blown "group think." The facts and context of the Ukrainian events have been forgotten or bowdlerized to such an extent that the American people are being systematically misled. Whenever the fuller context is mentioned, it is dismissed as "the Russian narrative."

We have seen this movie many times before -- as has John Kerry -- when the American people were snookered into the Vietnam War via the Gulf of Tonkin deception, when we were sold on Iraq's non-existent WMD, and when we were told "facts" about the Syrian gas attack that have since proved false, just to name a few of the times propaganda has dominated American discourse around war or peace.

Sadly, John Kerry seems to be completing the circle of his public career by becoming as an old man what the young John Kerry bravely spoke against.