And they had a message for us: more for them and less for us. They were ready to steal the food from our mouths, our children from our homes, to give Ukraine the aid it needs to beat Russia in a war only they seem to want.

They would strangle the political process at home to make this so. They would betray their basic roles as diplomats, speaking with forked tongues, to confound the conditions for dialogue with Russia and end the fighting.

In fact, with all the war mongering going on you would have thought this was a convocation of military commanders, not diplomats. But that's where we are in this process.

The message of NATO's foreign policy is simple, "War first. Talk later." Facts on the ground don't matter. Budget deficits don't matter. Plunging public support for Ukraine doesn't matter. All that matters is what these people want.

And they want war. But at the same time, they won't admit that that is exactly what they are waging.

The doublespeak has gotten to the point where even Pinocchio is looking at outgoing General-Secretary Jens Stoltenberg going, "Dood. Your schnoze!"

Then again, Stoltenberg is a year past his 'use-by' date. He's even more a lame duck than French President Emmanuel Macron at this point. The problem for those who actually run NATO, they can't agree on who to replace him with… a British Neoconservative or a Dutch Neoliberal?