The Washington Independent - Latest Comments in The Return of the Neocons

Re: The Return of the Neocons

kwaayesnama — Tue, 12 Aug 2008 07:20:40 -0000

Lets see my choice is cranky old John McCain or that energetic young, smart black man Barack Obama?

McCain who does not know how to use a computer but is willing to learn if we elect him

Re: The Return of the Neocons

groucho — Fri, 01 Aug 2008 10:10:56 -0000

There are a number of things wrong with Feith's post hoc justification of the invasions and explanation of why "If only they had taken my advise, all would have been well" Webrand actually highlights these flaws in his attempted defense of Feith.

1) The Adminstration SAID it was invading because there were weapons of mass destruction. It never said it was invading because there were materials from which Iraq could make weapons of mass destruction and give them to our enemies. Why didn't we say that before the invasion, instead of making this claim only when our public claims proved to be completely and utterly false?

2) If we invaded because we feared that Saddam was about to give WMD to terrorists, how could the brief invasion now claimed by Feith prevent that? The reason we had long supported Saddam was that he was surpressing the anti-American Shiite majority. In the absence of occupying American troops, no government friendly to the US can govern Iraq. If and when we leave, there will be a terrorist--friendly government (probably allied with Iran) in Iraq. This government will be motivated to help terrorists.

3) Consistent with #2, Feith admits that creating a democracy in Iraq was not the goal. However, contrary to Feith's claim, democracy was not a hoped-for "ancillary benefit". The US has long supported undemocratic governments in Epypt and Saudi Arabia because democratically-elected governments in these countries would be anti-American. We supported Saddam for this same reason and the Shah of Iran as well. (No one would describe the current Iran as a functioning democracy, but its government is more reflective of popular sentiment than are the governments of most of our allies in the Middle East and much more so than the Shah's brutal dictatorship which we strongly supported for many years.) Since our invasion of Iraq, it is well documented that we have attempted, through a variety of means, to influence the elections in that country in ways which, if some country attempted to do to us, would end diplomatic relations.

4) Feith and Webrand's argument that a similar plan in Afghanistan was a "success" is quite revealing. Like Iraq, we claimed that we invaded Afghanistran because our "negotiations" with their government failed to get us what we wanted--in this case, having Osama bin Laden and the rest of his criminal gang turned over to us. Of course, these negotiation were preposterous since, despite years of occupation, WE have not been able to capture or kill Osama or most of his followers. If we couldn't do this over a period of years, how did we expect the Afghanistan government to do so in the short time we gave them? In good faith negotiations, you ask the other side to do something that they actually have the power to do.

5)Since our invasion, many (most?) things in Afghanistan has gotten worse. For example, prior to our invastion, the Taliban had virtually eliminated the poppy/opium business. Now they have reversed course and are using it to support their insurgency. It is the largest cash crop. If our invasion of Afghanistan was such a success, then why are we still there and why are both presidential candidates arguing that we have to send more troops? (Obama and others have suggested that we could have succeeded in Afghanistan if only we hadn't pulled resources out in order to invade Iraq. Whatever its merits, I don't suppose Feith will be making this argument.)

6) Well there is an answer to all of these questions. The goal of the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq was long-term American control of these countries. While a brief invasion could not prevent the creation of a terrorist-friendly government in Iraq, long-term occupation might. Similarly, the surge can be viewed as a success if the goal was to reduce the insurgency to the point that Americans would stop complaining about the loss of American life and put up with the (hopefully reduced) costs of a permanent occupying force.

7) The Bush Administration has long claimed that we should ignore sentimentaly rhetoric and claims of good intentions and deal with the harsh realities of the world as they really are. Now that their policies have made all of those realities worse, they are writing books like Feith's in which they beg us to judge them on their good intentions. They meant well. Unfortunately, for Feith and his friends, there is little evidence that anyone in the Bush administration meant well.

Re: The Return of the Neocons

webrand — Wed, 30 Jul 2008 20:05:19 -0000

Risen was closer to Feith's Narrative in his story for the New York Times.

Re: The Return of the Neocons

webrand — Wed, 30 Jul 2008 19:39:49 -0000

Risen did a poor job of summarising Feith's narrative. According to Feith, his key goal, accepted by Rumsfeld and President Bush, was to have a very short occupation -- to turn over governance to the Iraqis in two or three weeks after the fall of Baghdad. The purpose was to avoid an insurgency or at least to weaken it. This policy had been a success in Afghanistan when there was quickly a plan to have a "loya jurga", a tribal gathering to decide on a new government. It wasn't long before Hamid Karzai, an "external", was installed by the Iraqi tribal governments.

Feith had designed an interim government arrangement in which some "externals" such as Chalabi and others Iraqis who had been outside Iraq, along with "internals", would take over governance just long enough to organize a vote for a government that would arrange for an election and the resulting government would write a constitution.

Armitage (State) and Tenet (CIA) did not like Chalabi nor did Bremer who replace Jay Garner. They claimed he would never be acceptable to the internal Iraqis. (At one time Chalabi had accused the CIA of incompetence). According to Feith, Armitage, Tenet and Bremer took actions so as to avoid the interim plan for some 14 months which exacerbated the insurgency. Finally Bush told Bremer he would have to leave and shortened the process, otherwise the Americans might still be sovereign today and the insurgency still flourishing.

It appears that Armitage, Tenet, and Bremer were wrong as the Iraqis have elected Chalabi and several other "externals" to full time positions in the Iraqi government. Feith strongly believes that the failure to adopt his interim Iraqi government plan was the cause of that insurgency or at least strengthened it appreciably.

This is what I got from Feith's book. He claims this history is derived from contemporaneous notes and memoranda. I have not, as yet, checked them.

Two other points Feith raised were quite interesting. He denied the purpose of the Iraq invasion was to introduce democracy into the Middle East although he thought that was an ancillary benefit but would not have, by itself, justified the invasion. Nor was the invasion for the purpose of revenge against al Qaeda. He claimed it was to avoid further attacks such as had occurred on 9/11. These were not necessarily attacks by al-Qaeda. There was and still is a global network of many terrorist organizations other than al Qaeda and he was concerned that a state terrorist such as Iran, North Korea or Iraq could provide WMD to one or more of these groups. Why Iraq? Feith explains that they had tried diplomacy on Iraq and it hadn't work. They had yet to fully explore diplomacy with Iran and North Korea. Although no stockpiles of WMD were found, the inspectors showed that Iraq still maintained resources from which WMD could be manufactured in a very short time frame.

Finally, one more interesting point was the discussion over the interaction between Defense and CIA on whether there were meaningful contacts between Iraq and terrorist groups. One of Feith's researchers found that CIA was systematically devaluating many contacts between Iraq and terrorist groups because of its analysts preconceptions that a secular government such as that of Saddam Hussein would never collaborate with a religious extremist group -- even against a common enemy. Defense's people thought that each contact should be evaluated on its own merits and not be watered down or filtered out because of the CIA's preconceptions. According to Feith, this was a matter of professionalism rather than a question of the administration trying to pressure the CIA to change its views as was leaked to the press by CIA. I have not yet checked the contemporaneous notes and memoranda on this point either.

Re: The Return of the Neocons

groucho — Thu, 17 Jul 2008 13:20:17 -0000

It is disheartening to see critics of the Iraq invasion get sucked into yet another diversionary argument by its architects (Feith, etc). It is of virtually no importance whether these architects intended (conspired?) to install Chalabi as their puppet. The ONLY importance of Chalabi is that his lies were used to support three implausible claims: (1) that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction; (2) that our invasion would be welcomed; and (3) that Chalabi or someone else could form a government which would allow us to leave quickly. By getting people to argue about whether their implausible post- invasion plans depended upon a conspiracy to install Chalabi and the supposed paralyzing battle between Defense, State, the White House and the CIA over this conspiracy, we are diverted from understanding that there was no plausible way that a stable government could have been created following the US invasion. Feith had no such plan; Wolfowitz had no such plan; Rumsfeld had no such plan; Cheney had no such plan; Perle had no such plan; Powell had no such plan; Rice had no such plan; (well you get the point). One or more of the following was bound to occur: (a) civil war between the Shiite, Sunni and Kurdish factions; (b) partition of the country into two or three pieces; (c) takeover of the country by the Shiite majority, probably aided by Iran; (d) direct takeover of all or part of the country by Iran; (e) an invasion by Turkey to suppress the creation of a hostile Kurdish state on its border. None of these outcomes were or are better than having Saddam Hussein continue in office.

There is a reason that Senator McCain, while claiming that the surge was a success, says we have to stay in Iraq for 50 or 100 years. There is a reason why the first President Bush, supported by almost all of his advisors, decided not to take over Iraq and depose Saddam Hussein during the First Gulf War. There is reason why Senator Clinton (when she thought she was going to be the next president) practically begged the current President Bush to get us out of Iraq before leaving office. And now, unfortunately, there is a reason why Senator Obama is waffling on his pledge to leave Iraq. The invasion was a mistake which cannot be easily fixed. There was no way out and there is no way out. To borrow the title of a recent movie, "There Will Be Blood"

Re: The Return of the Neocons

oldnavyguy — Sat, 05 Jul 2008 03:08:31 -0000

The neo-cons were blinded by their faith in ideology and the certainty of their infallibility regardless of the facts or reality. It's not the first time this has happened and it is a cautionary tale for those who care about effective democratic self-government and functioning republican institutions, which is why we must be careful of those who will develop opinions based on excessive partisanship or ideology. The greatest evils of human history have been created by simplifications: among them communism, fascism, laissez-faire capitalism and the revealed religions, both secular and sacred, that demand absolute belief without evidence. That is why most revolutions devolve into oppression and dictatorship. We were lucky that the American revolution was guided less by ideology than faith in self-government for the general welfare.

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Feith can place a thousand endnotes in his book but if they are selective then they tell more about his desire to avoid accountability than they do about what happened. For example, he seems to expend a great deal of effort in distancing himself from Chalabi. The facts that we do have contradict his assertions. The Office of Special Plans in the Pentagon used information from the dubious Chalabi source "Curveball" to skew the case for war. This included the assertions about rolling biological labs, an al Qaeda-Iraq relationship and WMDs. Feith states there was no "conspiracy" to place Chalabi as head of the government but he was given a key role in the Iraq interim government council under the Coalition Provisional Authority. (A fact missing from the article). This was the culmination of many years of seeking to support the Iraqi National Congress (INC), which was Chalabi's group. Thanks to lobbying by the neo-cons outside of government (which included Perle, Feith and Wolfowitz, among others) the (Republican) Congress passed the Iraq Liberation Act in 1998 which funneled almost $97 million to the INC. Feith would scapegoat Powell and the CIA but the INC also received $33 million dollars from the State Department between 2000 and September 2003 and $335K a month from the DIA from September 2003 through May 2004--and that is only what has been uncovered by auditors and the GAO. He was a special guest of First Lady Bush at the 2004 State of the Union Address. So SOMEONE influential and senior in the Administration was working very hard to finance Chalabi and the INC and all fingers point to his sponsors: the principals at the Project for the New American Century--the neo-cons who drove the case for war based on a belief in American hegemony in the region. Ockham's Razor, regardless of all of the jesuitical arguments that Feith and his ilk can come up with to try to cloud the issue, tells us that the obvious really is obvious. Documentary evidence, while the best evidence for determining motivation or establishing a direct relationship in a simple manner, is not the only evidence. Phone calls, undocumented personal conversations, unwritten orders can all be determined by the historian through cause and effect--what is called circumstantial evidence. No "smoking gun" standard stands against common sense. Documents can and have been destroyed and altered. Criminals are convicted every day absent documentary evidence.

>

The judgment of history will fall very heavily against this Administration. The cause and effect of Iraq and the economic effects we are now feeling has yet to be fully realized and the history yet to be assessed. Despite their assertions to the contrary, historians tend to get things right about an American Administration right. Few presidents have risen significantly over time. Even Truman--that favorite of Nixon and Bush apologists--though vilified and unpopular when he left office in 1953, was seen as an above-average president by historians when he left office; one who got the small things wrong but the big things right. He has risen to near-great in assessment but no one has gone from being considered a failure to rise above an assessment of mediocrity or malfeasance. I am afraid that this time in our history will be seen as not only one in which we experienced that manner of human frailty, but also an Administration, blinded by faith in the rightness of its cause and ideology, subjected the country to abuse of power and tyranny. Those who continue to want to paint this as a partisan issue (like Senator Lieberman) and not learn from it damn future generations of Americans to a worse fate.

Re: The Return of the Neocons

jamesbloom — Wed, 02 Jul 2008 22:43:14 -0000

Liar, liar pants on fire...I have a couple of questions. What has Israel ever given us, really? The Arab countries are the ones we get the oil from. Why such blind almost fanatical support fior Israel? They even send spies on our country. We caught one(Pollard) and God only knows how mwny more are out there. Why send our young men and women to conduct Israel's war? We criticized the Palestinians and former Iraq and Iran for violations of UN rules but Israel has committed even more violations but it is never mentioned. I could give a hoot about those countries but our government's actions makes our country look like Israel's lapdog, just like Blair looked like Bush's lapdog. What the hell for? Why are a lot of Americans so naive about 911? I couldn't believe at first that our own people and fellow "Americans" (they are not worth being called Americans) can do the things they did to us in 911 (by blowing up the World Trade and sendiing a missile into the Pentagon)but they did. Is it too horrible to accept this fact so WE DO NOT WANT TO TALK ABOUT IT. Conspiracy? Of course, why not? The ends justifies the means after all. The Constitution was designed to protect us from enemies from WITHIN as from without. What happens when the people supposed to protect us are the very people attacking us, from within. God help us. What happened to our great country that we have allowed such people to exist and do the things they have done and still continuing to do?

Re: The Return of the Neocons

yournamehere — Tue, 24 Jun 2008 06:51:57 -0000

How do you know what you know? Have you ever been deceived? What about when you thought Che Guevara was a hero of the people? Most of what we think we know about the issues Feith discusses is based on journalists and on the opinions of people who aren

Re: The Return of the Neocons

webrand — Tue, 24 Jun 2008 01:45:53 -0000

Mr. Feith's book is summarized by him in the Hugh Hewitt show, 60 Minutes, the Daily Show with John Stewart, NPR Morning Edition, PBS Tavis Smiley, This Week in Defense, CSIS Event, and in five videos presented by National Review Online. You can see these summaries and get the gist of his case at http://waranddecision.com He claims the reason the US went to war was this: "What the jihadist threat represents, and what 9/11 drove home, is that people who could just bypass our military can come in, in relatively small numbers, and do something as absolutely mind-boggling as destroy the World Trade Center towers, both of them, knock them down, destroy the west side of the Pentagon. And what we were concerned about in the days right after 9/11 is what are the other follow-on attacks that might occur? And what would be the effect on American society if there had been a series of them? It doesn

Re: The Return of the Neocons

ronnor — Mon, 23 Jun 2008 17:59:13 -0000

Mr. Risen has written a compelling book review on Mr. Fieth's book, "War and Decision." I haven't read the book yet but will. From other things that I've read about the book it is heavily referenced with documentation of official papers.

I was rather surprised at the anti-semitism and ad hominem attacks on our ally and some of our elected officials in the comments section. More like the raving of maniac's than considered thought; suited for something like Kos but certainly not for a James Risen review.

Re: The Return of the Neocons

guyfromoz — Mon, 23 Jun 2008 06:51:26 -0000

HELLO GOLD STAR MOTHER.

Most of us will never really know your pain about the loss of your son, but there are many of us who share your anger and fury.

Little by little, we will keep on speaking till we finally stop these war criminals.

Feith and his snivelling, cowardly accomplices and bosses will indeed get their final judgement.

I have never met you, but I know your son is in Heaven, watching down as you tell the truth.

Much love and respect from a guy in oz.

Re: The Return of the Neocons

guyfromoz — Mon, 23 Jun 2008 06:51:26 -0000

Re: The Return of the Neocons

goldstarmom — Sun, 22 Jun 2008 22:46:55 -0000

Poor Doug Feith, the Pentagon team

Re: The Return of the Neocons

guyfromoz — Sun, 22 Jun 2008 22:00:39 -0000

Thank you darkwraith for link to your article on Lt. Col. Kwiatkowski. She may not have been able to stop the madness, but she tried her best. What a courageous military officer, considering the treacherous political warzone she was deployed to. I am quite certain that her writings informed and and appalled then inspired many of her colleagues above and below her in the chain of command. There has been no shortage of top brass who have taken a stand against this cabal of neocon lunatics. Soldiers like Kwiatkowski will one day earn their honorable place in history for the efforts they made to stop the madness. I pray that it's true that the current Joint Chiefs Of Staff have made it known to Bush and Cheney that they will not obey any order to attack Iran.

Re: The Return of the Neocons

darkwraith — Sat, 21 Jun 2008 15:53:06 -0000

Mr. Feith's reconstruction of history directly contradicts eyewitness narratives from objective, disciplined, trained observers who worked in his shadow and the penumbra cast by the neo-conservative cabal that took charge of the machinery of war in the Office of Special Plans. I cite Lt. Col. Karen Kwiatkowski, a career soldier who was right there as Feith demonstrated a fundamental incapacity to understand, much less project, "good order and discipline" (in her words), which is as essential to the functionality of military bureaucracy as it is to the war-making engine of battlefield management. Almost exactly three years ago, while mainstream news media were still in the thrall of the criminally incompetent neo-cons in the Pentagon and the White House, I wrote favorably of Kwiatkowski:

http://dark-wraith.com/2005/06/analysis-stone-s...

To this day, however, the mainstream media allow the construction of history to be generated in a debate among the distended, self-exonerating insiders of the Bush Administration, none of whom have suffered by any measure, as have the Iraqis and the Afghans in the still-hot cauldron of fevered dreams of the pretenders to the throne of Empire now crumbling.

Re: The Return of the Neocons

sunzooomspark — Sat, 21 Jun 2008 07:32:45 -0000

Preemptive, Preventive, or "Inventive"?

This was neither a "preemptive war" (an act considered justifiable in the face of an imminent threat) nor did it even rise to the level of an act of "preventive war" (launched in anticipation of a future loss of security and indistinct from a war of aggression). When Israel attacked Iraq's the Osirak nuclear reactor in 1981 it could at least be reasonably argued that they were preventing a possible nuclear strike against them.

But our specious rationale for attacking Iraq, the hypothetical transfer of imaginary WMD (OMG, did Condi just say "mushroom cloud"?) to al-Qaida, was so unlikely as to be laughable. Saddam was petrified of the REAL and imminent threat he faced from the US and sought to signal his position in one instance by having his own "international terrorist in residence" Abu Nidal shot in the head four times in the lead-up the the invasion. Perhaps this was Saddam's bid to join us in the Global War On Terror?

Our attack was an unjustified attempt to grab Iraq's oil and establish a new platform for the projection of U.S. power in the Middle East. Recall that when Bin Ladin demanded that all U.S. forces be recalled from Saudi Arabia, BUSH COMPLIED. The U.S. requires a ringside seat in the region so long as Israel remains our strategic ally.

There was no honor in this decision. This was international larceny disguised as revenge, perpetrated by armchair generals and chicken-hawks whose own personal contempt for our REAL warriors preempted a more sober and cautious approach to such a questionable enterprise. A pox on them . . .

Re: The Return of the Neocons

gooch — Fri, 20 Jun 2008 23:00:30 -0000

For some chuckles, read 'Iraq Expert' Perle Shills for Chalabi at Senate Panel
by Juan Cole, April 23, 2004: http://www.antiwar.com/cole/?articleid=2368

Here's the transcript of the hearing before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee referred to by Cole: http://bulk.resource.org/gpo.gov/hearings/108s/...

Re: The Return of the Neocons

gooch — Fri, 20 Jun 2008 22:05:59 -0000

Just for the hell of it, from 11/3/2002, The Guardian, "Carve-up of Oil Riches Begins":

The leader of the London-based Iraqi National Congress, Ahmed Chalabi, has met executives of three US oil multinationals to negotiate the carve-up of Iraq's massive oil reserves post-Saddam.

Disclosure of the meetings in October in Washington - confirmed by an INC spokesman - comes as Lord Browne, the head of BP, has warned that British oil companies have been squeezed out of post-war Iraq even before the first shot has been fired in any US-led land invasion.

Confirming the meetings to US journalists, INC spokesman Zaab Sethna said: 'The oil people are naturally nervous. We've had discussions with them, but they're not in the habit of going around talking about them.'

Next month oil executives will gather at a country retreat near Sandringham to discuss Iraq and the future of the oil market. The conference, hosted by Sheikh Yamani, the former Oil Minister of Saudi Arabia, will feature a former Iraqi head of military intelligence, an ex-Minister and City financiers. Topics for discussion include the country's oil potential, whether it can become as big a supplier as Saudi Arabia, and whether a post-Saddam Iraq might destroy the Organisation of Petroleum Exporting Countries.

Disclosure of talks between the oil executives and the INC - which enjoys the support of Bush administration officials - is bound to exacerbate friction on the UN Security Council between permanent members and veto-holders Russia, France and China, who fear they will be squeezed out of a post-Saddam oil industry in Iraq.

Although Russia, France and China have existing deals with Iraq, Chalabi has made clear that he would reward the US for removing Saddam with lucrative oil contracts, telling the Washington Post recently: 'American companies will have a big shot at Iraqi oil.'

Indeed, the issue of who gets their hands on the world's second largest oil reserves has been a major factor driving splits in the Security Council over a new resolution on Iraq.

[...]

Re: The Return of the Neocons

betz55 — Fri, 20 Jun 2008 16:53:40 -0000

Rummy, Feith, Wolfowitz, and all the other neocon warmongers should have their medical insurance taken away, then their houses foreclosed, then their pensions removed. After their wives divorce them, they should be taken to the Green Zone, made to put on a t shirt and jeans and forced to walk out of the Green Zone into the streets of Baghdad where they will have to survive,on their own mind you, for a year, without aid from any military body. If they makes it through that year, upon their return, before they loses what jobs they had - they will be told "funding" dried up, they should be made to testify about their experiences and grilled about the falsehoods, lies, and pathologically screwed up excuses they gave the American people about the war in Iraq from their prison cells. They should be asked why on earth are American taxpayers forced to give trillions of dollars to a war when our own people are homeless or soon to be, have no jobs, no healthcare and are going without everyday. Bush, Cheney, Rice, Woolsey, Perle,Hadley, Wurmser, Natsios, Barlett, and especially Bolton should all be made to do the same thing, Bush to Anbar province, Cheney to Fallujah, and Rummy? well Rummy... let's just throw him to the troops and let them tear him apart. These a**holes should be made to disappear and never be allowed to practice their warmongering politics ever again.

Re: The Return of the Neocons

billinchicago — Fri, 20 Jun 2008 06:18:34 -0000

"They certainly thought that Chalabi was, if not the most competent Iraqi, at least in the top two or three.

Re: The Return of the Neocons

kathykathy — Fri, 20 Jun 2008 05:23:51 -0000

To dallasdem - I couldn't agree with you more!!!!!!

Re: The Return of the Neocons

poeticjustice — Fri, 20 Jun 2008 05:01:31 -0000

It's great to see that this debate is underway.

The long-term record is going to require some truly epic historian(s) with some unique approaches to their tradecraft.

I suspect the right analysis is going to require the understanding that multiple objectives were being worked simultaneously, some overtly, some not. Holistically I doubt whether any one historian will be able to capture this. Ultimately the debate should include the decision to militarize the North American space, and the utilization of the Counterintelligence Field Activity office of the Pentagon in domestic affairs/media. If someone can piece this together, including which journalist were(are) involved, this historical record will help with the framing of the "evildoers" as well as the "heroic."

I think the pope is correct when he says that ultimately good will triumph in the end though he may want inquire more thoroughly into why Cardinal George has been upset recently.

Re: The Return of the Neocons

dallasdem — Thu, 19 Jun 2008 22:57:39 -0000

When, oh when, will liberal Jews (Pro-Israeli's) like me and mainstream America wake up to the rule of neo-conservative, pro-Likkud, right wing, Israeli control of our government? These people are NOT Americans, but pro-Israeli right wing, fundamentalist monsters, like the fundamentalist Muslims and Christians. . When will liberal, progressive American and Israeli Jews, and all Americans from every race, color and creed, be free? These people are NOT Americans nor do they care about America. They live for Israel. If they were any other ethnic group, they would be suspect. Until we have stopped our fear of being called anti-Semitic, (the true ethnic group of Palestine and its indigenous peoples), and speak out against the neo-cons of the Christian and Jewish and Muslim and Christian Right wing, we will NEVER be a free nation. No other country on Earth has such control over our Government.

Re: The Return of the Neocons

jbulette — Thu, 19 Jun 2008 22:55:32 -0000

we can anticipate ongoing efforts from the war people to justify their efforts to conduct a focused war in an effort to disguise the larger effort to conduct perpetual war. gooch has it right, if the war people continue in power we will have war. mcnamara, had the courage to aknowlege the war he managed in se asia was a mistake, was based on a flawed premise, the domino theory, and that the johnson adm and the pentagon lied about progress intne war. he also advised that no future war be declared without a robust moral debate. feith,s efforts lack any moral substance. it reminds me of kissinger trying to justify prolonging the war in viet nam. hopefully, more and more of our citizens will be able to see the neocons and their many supportersin the war industry as moral cretins. jbulette

Re: The Return of the Neocons

htessay — Thu, 19 Jun 2008 20:36:29 -0000

Looks like washing blood off your hands is a little tougher than you thought, eh Dougie?