Congress votes third time to end the Iran war; Pentagon extended it to 2027 two weeks earlier.

…(cont) Same week, the Congressional Budget Office comes in with its own number. $38 billion total, they say, and two to three billion more every month from here on, going forward. That's also CBS, quoting the CBO report straight. And that Pentagon figure — the $33.4 billion — doesn't even count what the Pentagon itself says other agencies spent on top of it. Hundreds of millions more, they said. They didn't put a price on that part. They just said it happened.

Is the $33.4 billion the whole bill? Is it the $38 billion? Or is it whatever the other agencies spent that the Pentagon never priced?

Here's the word I keep coming back to. The Wall Street Journal — this is the Common Dreams write-up of it, back on September 3rd — says Secretary Hegseth is keeping what he calls a "presence" of fifty thousand troops in the region, extended into next year. Presence. Not war, not occupation, not deployment. Presence. Like a guy who shows up to the block party and never quite leaves.

Tuesday, the House voted 220 to 204 to tell the President to end the war or come back and ask Congress first. Third time the House has done that this year — that's CBS's count, and the Washington Examiner's count too, seven Republicans this time, three more than backed it the time before.

And two weeks before that vote, the Pentagon had already signed off on stretching that same "presence" into 2027. One paper says stop. One paper says 2027. Which one is still standing this morning? I'll tell you what CBS said about the last two votes just like this one: they failed to stop him. That's not my conclusion. That's their sentence.

Same Tuesday, Representative Massie was on the floor forcing a vote to impeach that Secretary — "high crimes and misdemeanors," his words, ABC's story. And the White House, that same day, said it was backing the Secretary. Both things happened Tuesday. Both things are about the same man.

I went and stood at the corner store Wednesday, the way I do, and asked the kid behind the register what he thought "presence" meant when the government uses it. He said it means whatever they need it to mean until somebody makes them stop meaning it.

Oh — before you go. One more thing. That word again. Presence. Fifty thousand troops, into 2027, and that's what they called it. My car's been sitting in the garage since June. I don't call that a presence. I call it broken, and I know down to the dollar what it costs me every day it sits there doing nothing. They've got fifty thousand people and thirty-three billion dollars sitting somewhere overseas, doing something.

They don't call that a war anymore. They call it a presence.