On Sean Hannity’s Fox News show last night, two conservative panelists said President Obama would start a war with Iran in a strictly politically-motivated act in order to wag-the-dog and garner support for his 2012 re-election bid. The accusations came from Fox News contributor Angela McGlowan and former Sen. Alfonse D’Amato (R-NY).

“I say he starts a war with Iran before the election which will make it very hard for the Republican to win,” Donald Trump predicted (again) on Hannity’s radio show yesterday morning. “I think it’s going to happen.” On Fox News Channel, Hannity put the question to his guests:

HANNITY: Do you believe he would do that?

MCGLOWAN: This man would do anything. He’s Machiavellian. He would do anything to win re-election.

HANNITY: Do you agree with that, Senator?

D’AMATO: Absolutely. [...] I said I wouldn’t put it past him. He is a total political animal.

MCGLOWAN: Animal!

D’AMATO: And he would use that if he thought it would make a difference to get him elected.

HANNITY: …If you were right and Trump were right and Angela were right it would be the single biggest abuse of power in American history that I can think of.

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Earlier in the day on his radio show, Hannity, who dedicated an entire episode in March to a hawkish documentary, was less ambiguous about the need to attack Iran, without discussing political motives. “The answer is not to be reactive but to be proactive, which means you respond earlier,” he said. In other words, he spoke approvingly of the same action he said a few hours later would be “the single biggest abuse of power in American history.”

Last night on Fox News, Rep. Allen West (R-FL) joined in on the right wing’s trumped-up hysteria over the U.S. military’s new global strategic guidance President Obama announced yesterday. West claimed that the president “probably” didn’t consult the military to formulate the new strategy:

VAN SUSTEREN: Do you think that the president — I assume, maybe I’m wrong, but were military leaders not part of the new plan or strategy going forward? Are you hearing from people at the Pentagon, former colleagues they were ignored in the discussion on which direction to take the military?

WEST: I can tell you that is probably the case. I have heard some rumination to that effect. And also when the president stands up and says this is the guidance I gave. The guidance he gave was not oriented towards how we have a strategy to contend with threats across the world. It was more so based on a budget analysis.

Watch it:

This claim is not true. During the announcement yesterday, Obama thanked “the service secretaries and chiefs, the combatant commanders and so many defense leaders — military and civilian, active, Guard and Reserve — for their contributions” to the new strategic guidance. Defense Secretary Leon Panetta said that DOD’s “senior military and civilian leadership” provided recommendations. And Joint Chiefs of Staff chairman Gen. Martin Dempsey, the nation’s top military officer, said the same:

DEMPSEY: This strategy also benefited from an exceptional amount of attention by our senior military and civilian leadership. On multiple occasions, we held all-day and multi-day discussions with service chiefs and combatant commanders. The service chiefs, who are charged with developing the force for the strategy, were heard early and often. The combatant commanders, charged with executing the strategy, all weighed in time and time again. And we were all afforded extraordinary access to both the president and the secretary of defense.

And not only did military leaders contribute to the new strategy, but as Dempsey noted, there’s “real buy-in” from the top brass.

The Republican Party’s dogmatic Islamophobia is increasingly self-destructive. With the majority of rank-and-file Republicans insisting that Muslims innately pose a threat to American society, Muslim Republicans are fleeing or being forced out of their own party. Florida Republican Nezar Hamze endured the latter when Broward County’s Republican Party Executive Committee rejected his bid for committee membership by a 11-158 vote. The chief charge against him? “Terrorist.” The committee even changed the rules for applicants just so Hamze could be subjected to an interrogation for five minutes, a rule he jokingly called the “Hamze rule.”

Last night on the Daily Show, correspondent Jason Jones sat down with Hamze to discuss the “well-orchestrated campaign” against him. Hamze noted that an individual had printed handouts before the vote that labeled him a “terrorist” and insisted “Islam is evil.” Jones sought out Joe Kaufman, the founder of the organization Americans Against Hate, to enlist his “help” considering that the group’s “goal is to be an active voice against those who spread bigotry and violence.” As it turns out, this “anti-bigotry crusader” actually distributed the fliers smearing Hamze as a terrorist. His chief reason for the charge? Hamze is the head of the local chapter of CAIR:

KAUFMAN: He is the local head of CAIR, the Council on American-Islamic Relations — an organization that was started by a terrorist group overseas…He calls me something called an Islamophobe.

JONES: An Islamophobe?

KAUFMAN: I am no Islamophobe. Indeed, I’m a terrorphobe.

JONES: You do not discriminate on personal characteristics?

KAUFMAN: Absolutely not.

JONES: Right, you’re just judging him on assumed associations.

KAUFMAN: No doubt. That is exactly what I’m doing.

Watch it:

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Indeed, Kaufman’s entire organization seems dedicated to conjuring terrorist conspiracies within Islamic organizations and generally smearing American Muslims as dangerous infiltrators of American Society. But this narrow-mindedness is not restricted to a local level. State officials like Rep. Rick Womick (R-TN) called for purging Muslims from the military. Former GOP presidential Herman Cain said he would never hire a Muslim to serve in his cabinet. Fellow candidate Newt Gingrich insists that Sharia law is threatening to replace American law.

Jones later proved that both Kaufman and Hamze hold the same, practically identical positions on central issues to the GOP — be it cap and trade or abortion. The sole face that Hamze is Muslim is all that separated him from the embrace of his chosen political party. “After all this, you still want to be a Republican?” Jones asked. Hamze replied, “Yeah.” To which Jones said, “That is so nonsensical, it actually makes me think that you’re a Republican.”

It was fairly easy to predict that the right wing would get hysterical after President Obama and his top defense advisers announced a new military strategy that would rely on a “leaner” force. While some like Rep. Howard “Buck” McKeon (R-CA) have focused on the “myth” that the new strategy eliminates the military’s ability to fight two major wars at once (the New York Times notes the “two-wars” strategy “was always an artificial construct intended mainly to ensure the Pentagon got all it wanted”), others have advanced claims about the strategy that are “complete bullshit.”

Bill Kristol joined in last night on Fox News and offered his (albeit contradictory) two cents attack line. One the one hand, Kristol said that the cutbacks in military spending “would decimate our military” and then just moments later, he downplayed the cuts as a deficit reduction measure, saying they are “tiny”:

KRISTOL: This would decimate our military. It would weaken the United States of America. Let’s not kid ourselves. There is no magic. You have don’t cut the ground forces he wants to cut, cut our capacities around the world, tell allies, whoa, you know, you thought in the past ground troops could land if there was a problem. I’m not so sure anymore. [...]

It’s unbelievably irresponsible. The savings are tiny when it comes to the actual budget deficit. The highest number is $40 billion a year when he is running $1.5 trillion deficit when he wasted $800 billion on the stimulus, none of which went to the military. Doesn’t that tell you everything.

Watch the clip:

Max Boot says it’s “impossible” (impossible!) to cut $1 trillion from military spending over the next decade, although he doesn’t exactly say why (it’s actually very possible).

But Kristol’s back and forth highlights the fact that, as this blog has noted numerous times before, those opposed to eliminating wasteful military spending rely primarily on fear mongering, not facts. Taking a line from Kristol, “Doesn’t that tell you everything?”