People believe what they’re predisposed to believe. And the lefty media and even some anti-war ‘righty’ figures fell for this nonsense.

President Donald Trump on Tuesday denied a New York Times report that US officials were discussing a military plan to send up to 120,000 troops to the Middle East to counter any attack or nuclear weapons acceleration by Iran.

“I think it’s fake news, OK? Now, would I do that? Absolutely. But we have not planned for that. Hopefully we’re not going to have to plan for that. And if we did that, we’d send a hell of a lot more troops than that,” Trump told reporters at the White House.

The Times reported that Acting Defense Secretary Patrick Shanahan presented an updated plan last week in a meeting of top national security aides that envisions sending as many as 120,000 American troops to the region if Iran attacks US forces or accelerates work on its nuclear weapons.

120,000 is well below the numbers for either of the campaigns against Saddam Hussein. And Iran’s forces are more dangerous than Iraq’s.

As President Trump (a guy the media likes to pretend is clueless) rightly points out, it would take a whole lot more troops than that.

Do we have a contingency plan if Iran attacks us? The military has plans for everything. But it’s not currently on the table.

Despite all the rhetoric about the drums of war (which always seem to be beating for the sorts of folks who can’t think of a better line), we’re nowhere near a war with Iran. Not unless Iran does something really stupid, like launch a surprise attack. 

Trump has applied economic pressure on Iran while letting the Europeans cope with the fallout from the collapse of the nuke sellout.

The pro-Iran lobby is going after John Bolton for all the obvious reasons. But this isn’t what a rush to war or a crawl to war even looks like. It is what pressure to negotiate looks like. 

Trump says things. And by 2019, you would think that the media and some on the right would be better able to put his comments into perspective.

So there’s Trump saying, “It’s going to be a bad problem for Iran if something happens, I can tell you that.

And you’ve also got Trump saying, “What I would like to see with Iran, I’d like to see them call me. What they should be doing is calling me up, sitting down. We can make a deal, a fair deal.”

It takes wishful thinking by anti-war lefties (and some of their useful idiots on the right) to believe that war is imminent. 

But the Left wants to claim that a war is nigh so it can dust off its old anti-war rhetoric.