This week I began to worry that Senator Lindsey Graham isn’t as happy as he should be. He’s always been affable. And, rare for Washington, he’s sometimes intentionally funny. But I think he could have more job satisfaction. Graham is a long-serving member of the Senate Armed Services Committee and a committed hawk. He supports all the usual moves. Surging in Afghanistan, taking the fight to ISIS in Iraq, and helping the “moderate rebels” in Syria. But he also talks up the more obscure and exotic causes. He was for protecting Georgia from the Russians and sending arms to Ukraine. He’s kind of a hipster hawk. He’s really into interventions before they become cool.

But when the news broke that four U.S. Special Forces troops were killed in Niger, Lindsey Graham confessed to the media that he didn’t know we had troops there. “I didn’t know there was 1,000 troops in Niger,” he told Chuck Todd. He admitted that things weren’t ideal. “We don’t know exactly where we’re at in the world, militarily, and what we’re doing. So John McCain is going to try to create a new system to make sure that we can answer the question [about] why we were there.”

“They are going to brief us next week as to why they were there and what they were doing,” he said.