This evening's music features jazz and blues pianist and bandleader Buddy Johnson.

Here are some stories from tonight's post:

Terrorism poses no existential threat to America. We must stop pretending otherwise

One of the most unchallenged, zany assertions during the war on terror has been that terrorists present an existential threat to the United States, the modern state and civilization itself. This is important because the overwrought expression, if accepted as valid, could close off evaluation of security efforts. For example, no defense of civil liberties is likely to be terribly effective if people believe the threat from terrorism to be existential.

The notion that international terrorism presents an existential threat was spawned by the traumatized in the immediate aftermath of 9/11. Rudy Giuliani, mayor of New York at the time, recalls that all “security experts” expected “dozens and dozens and multiyears of attacks like this” and, in her book The Dark Side, Jane Mayer observed that “the only certainty shared by virtually the entire American intelligence community” was that “a second wave of even more devastating terrorist attacks on America was imminent”. Duly terrified, US intelligence services were soon imaginatively calculating the number of trained al-Qaida operatives in the United States to be between 2,000 and 5,000.

Also compelling was the extrapolation that, because the 9/11 terrorists were successful with box-cutters, they might well be able to turn out nuclear weapons. Soon it was being authoritatively proclaimed that atomic terrorists could “destroy civilization as we know it” and that it was likely that a nuclear terrorist attack on the United States would transpire by 2014. ...

Senators John McCain and Lindsay Graham have insisted for months that Isis presents an existential threat to the United States. An alarmed David Brooks reported that financial analysts have convinced themselves that the group has the potential to generate a worldwide “economic cataclysm.”

And General Michael Flynn, recently retired as head of the Defense Intelligence Agency, has been insisting that the terrorist enemy is “committed to the destruction of freedom and the American way of life” while seeking “world domination, achieved through violence and bloodshed.” It was reported that his remarks provoked nods of approval, cheers and “ultimately a standing ovation” from the audience.

Thus even the most modest imaginable effort to rein in the war on terror hyperbole may fail to gel.

Kerry Makes Clear AUMF Language Won’t Stop Ground War

Speaking to the Senate Appropriations Committee today, Secretary of State John Kerry once again made clear that President Obama’s Authorization for the Use of Military Force (AUMF) against ISIS won’t seriously limit the ground war.

The language of the nominal ban on ground combat only applies to “enduring offensive combat operations,” which includes so many exclusions that almost anything could be allowed.

Kerry insisted that “enduring” combat only meant “weeks and weeks of combat,” and wouldn’t cover any operations which are meant to assist Iraqi or other forces on the ground. ...

The White House also made this clear earlier, in trying to get hawks to support the bill, saying the limitations were all so deliberately vague that they wouldn’t limit much of anything.

Ready for Nuclear War over Ukraine?

In a recent interview with Canada’s CBC Radio, Ukraine’s Deputy Foreign Minister Vadym Prystaiko said, “Everybody is afraid of fighting with a nuclear state. We are not anymore, in Ukraine — we’ve lost so many people of ours, we’ve lost so much of our territory.”

Prystaiko added, “However dangerous it sounds, we have to stop [Russian President Vladimir Putin] somehow. For the sake of the Russian nation as well, not just for the Ukrainians and Europe.” The deputy foreign minister announced that Kiev is preparing for “full-scale war” against Russia and wants the West to supply lethal weapons and training so the fight can be taken to Russia. ...

Why should such a pedestrian dispute justify the possibility of vaporizing millions of human beings and conceivably ending life on the planet? Yet, instead of working out a plan for a federalized structure in Ukraine or even allowing people in the east to vote on whether they want to remain under the control of the Kiev regime, the world is supposed to risk nuclear annihilation.

But therein lies one of the under-reported stories of the Ukraine crisis: There is a madness to the Kiev regime that the West doesn’t want to recognize because to do so would upend the dominant narrative of “our” good guys vs. Russia’s bad guys. If we begin to notice that the right-wing regime in Kiev is crazy and brutal, we might also start questioning the “Russian aggression” mantra.

According to the Western “group think,” the post-coup Ukrainian government “shares our values” by favoring democracy and modernity, while the rebellious ethnic Russians in eastern Ukraine are “Moscow’s minions” representing dark forces of backwardness and violence, personified by Russia’s “irrational” President Putin. In this view, the conflict is a clash between the forces of good and evil where there is no space for compromise.

Yet, there is a craziness to this “group think” that is highlighted by Prystaiko’s comments. Not only does the Kiev regime display a cavalier attitude about dragging the world into a nuclear catastrophe but it also has deployed armed neo-Nazis and other right-wing extremists to wage a dirty war in the east that has involved torture and death-squad activities.

Saudis ‘would let Israeli jets use their air space to attack Iran’

Kingdom merely wants ‘some sign of progress’ on Palestinian issue, according to unnamed senior European source in TV report

Saudi Arabia is prepared to let Israeli fighter jets use its airspace if it proves necessary to attack Iran’s nuclear program, an Israeli TV station reported Tuesday, highlighting growing ties in the shadow of Tehran’s nuclear drive.

Riyadh’s only condition is that Israel make some kind of progress in peace talks with the Palestinians, Channel 2 reported Tuesday, citing an unnamed senior European source.

“The Saudi authorities are completely coordinated with Israel on all matters related to Iran,” the European official in Brussels said.

Jerusalem and Riyadh do not have diplomatic ties, but unconfirmed reports have swirled for years of coordination between them against the common enemy of Iran, a partnership that may ramp up should the world powers reach a reportedly emerging deal that would allow Tehran to continue enriching some uranium.

Marijuana Is About to Be Legal — and Virtually Unregulated — in Washington, DC

Pot smokers in Washington, DC, are about to face a dizzying predicament. Come Thursday, residents of the US capital will be able to legally possess two ounces of marijuana and grow up to six plants. They can also trade or gift up to an ounce in pre-rolled joints, blunts, and the like. But they won't be able to buy any of that weed legally.

The unusual situation is the result of political maneuvering by Congress to block Initiative 71, a ballot initiative to make marijuana possession legal for adults 21 and over that was approved in the November 2014 midterm election by 70 percent of DC voters.

A month after the initiative was approved, Congress, which controls DC's budget, intervened by adding a "rider" to a massive federal spending bill. This small additional clause, that is seemingly unrelated to the rest of the spending bill, tried to prevent local officials from using federal funds to implement the initiative. Paradoxically, the same legislation also contained another amendment to stop the federal government from interfering with state medical marijuana industries. ...

For the past 30 days, DC's legalization plan has been undergoing a congressional review, which concludes Thursday. The end result will likely be that pot becomes legal but virtually unregulated in DC, meaning people will be trading — or "gifting" — their weed in a hazy zone of legal uncertainty.