neoconservadroid

2005-02-08T09:26:00.000-08:00

I got sick of focusing on this evil elite and am letting it go for awhile.

another happy neocon new year?

2005-01-02T10:03:00.000-08:00

When Mr. Rumsfeld told Specialist Thomas Wilson in Kuwait that the only reason the troops lacked armor was "a matter of production and capability," he was lying. [New York Times]

strange neocon bedfellows

2004-12-17T08:18:00.000-08:00

Hell-bent on regime change in Iran, some neoconservative hawks are lobbying the Bush administration to support an organization designated as a terrorist group by the State Department.

...read it all: In Bed with Terrorists by Laura Rozen

they eat their young, too

2004-12-16T09:41:00.000-08:00

Rumsfeld hit by a Right hook, by Alec Russell, Telegraph:

Donald Rumsfeld, the US defence secretary, faced a blistering attack from the Right yesterday as an influential neo-conservative figure accused him of "breathtaking arrogance" and called for him to resign. William Kristol, the editor of the Weekly Standard, the house journal of the neo-conservative movement, said no wartime defence secretary had ever "so breezily dodged responsibility and so glibly passed the buck."

neoconservadroids' liberal legacy?

2004-11-29T08:20:00.000-08:00

One might, therefore, begin a consideration of neoconservatism with its rich history — or, in the alternative, with its contemporary influence. I propose to do neither (though I will indeed touch upon the past and the present). Instead, I want to explore its future — specifically, the ways in which neoconservatism has evolved according to its own premises in the direction of a current and future politics dedicated to the preservation and extension of liberal order, properly understood. To get to neoconservatism’s liberal legacy, however, it is necessary to begin with liberalism’s origins in the nature of politics itself.

...read it all: Neoconservatism’s Liberal Legacy by Tod Lindberg, Policy Review

pride goeth before the fall

2004-11-28T09:22:00.000-08:00

In a seemingly innocuous Thanksgiving message to readers last week, William Kristol, the neoconservative editor of The Weekly Standard magazine, slipped in a surprise demand for Rumsfeld’s dismissal.

“What remains to be done is to announce new leadership for the department of defence,” wrote Kristol. “This, surely, would be an important opportunity for a strong, Bush-doctrine-supporting outsider, someone who of course would be a team player, but someone who could also work with the military and broaden support for the president’s policy.”

Boiled down, this meant: almost anybody but Rumsfeld, whose performance has not always matched his swagger. His failure to install enough troops on the ground after last year’s invasion of Iraq has upset American generals and alienated supporters of the war.

“I am allergic to Rumsfeld,” said Ralph Peters, a former lieutenant-colonel and robust media champion of the war on terror. “We did a great thing in Iraq, but we did it very badly.

“He is an extremely talented man but he has the tragic flaw of hubris. His arrogance is unbearable. My friends in uniform just hate him.”

The calls for Rumsfeld to be dismissed have intensified since the departure was announced of his cabinet rival, Colin Powell, the secretary of state. With the liberal-leaning Powell being the first to go, conservatives no longer see the need to hold back their opinions.

...read it all: Neocons join the lynch mob for ‘arrogant’ Rumsfeld by Sarah Baxter, Times, 28 November 2004

multiple conservative frustrations

2004-11-26T21:44:00.000-08:00

From An Era of End-Timers and Neo-Cons: Whatever Happened to Conservatives? by Paul Craig Roberts, Counterpunch:

In the ranks of the new conservatives, however, I see and experience much hate. It comes to me in violently worded, ignorant and irrational emails from self-professed conservatives who literally worship George Bush. Even Christians have fallen into idolatry. There appears to be a large number of Americans who are prepared to kill anyone for George Bush.

The Iraqi War is serving as a great catharsis for multiple conservative frustrations: job loss, drugs, crime, homosexuals, pornography, female promiscuity, abortion, restrictions on prayer in public places, Darwinism and attacks on religion. Liberals are the cause. Liberals are against America. Anyone against the war is against America and is a liberal. "You are with us or against us."

This is the mindset of delusion, and delusion permits of no facts or analysis. Blind emotion rules. Americans are right and everyone else is wrong. End of the debate.

That, gentle reader, is the full extent of talk radio, Fox News, the Wall Street Journal Editorial page, National Review, the Weekly Standard, and, indeed, of the entire concentrated corporate media where noncontroversy in the interest of advertising revenue rules.

Once upon a time there was a liberal media. It developed out of the Great Depression and the New Deal. Liberals believed that the private sector is the source of greed that must be restrained by government acting in the public interest. The liberals' mistake was to identify morality with government. Liberals had great suspicion of private power and insufficient suspicion of the power and inclination of government to do good.

Liberals became Benthamites (after Jeremy Bentham). They believed that as the people controlled government through democracy, there was no reason to fear government power, which should be increased in order to accomplish more good.

The conservative movement that I grew up in did not share the liberals' abiding faith in government. "Power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely."

Today it is liberals, not conservatives, who endeavor to defend civil liberties from the state. Conservatives have been won around to the old liberal view that as long as government power is in their hands, there is no reason to fear it or to limit it.

up next: North Korea

2004-11-23T13:30:00.000-08:00

Bush claimed Sunday that his interlocutors, who included the leaders of the four other parties – Russia, China, Japan, and South Korea – agreed with him, but Hu and South Korean President Roh Moo-Hyun have not backed down publicly from their strong opposition to a harder line toward Pyongyang.

Indeed, just before the weekend summit, Roh told an audience in Los Angeles that a hardline policy over North Korea's nuclear weapons would have "grave repercussions," adding, "There is no alternative left in dealing with this issue except dialogue."

The South Korean leader also denounced the idea of an economic embargo against Pyongyang.

That the hawks back in Washington are indeed mobilizing became clear Monday when William Kristol, an influential neoconservative who also chairs the Project for the New American Century (PNAC), faxed a statement entitled "Toward Regime Change in North Korea" to reporters and various "opinion leaders" in the capital.

....The article, "Tear Down This Tyranny," called for the implementation of a six-point strategy aimed at ousting North Korean Chairman Kim Jong-Il, in part by "working around the pro-appeasement crowd in the South Korean government," which apparently includes Roh himself.

...read it all: Hawks Push Regime Change in North Korea by Jim Lobe

the rise of stephen hadley

2004-11-21T09:03:00.000-08:00

Stephen Hadley is a fire-tested Vulcan--a hardliner close to Vice President Dick Cheney and to the neoconservative camp. Named by the president in mid-November 2004 to replace Condoleezza Rice as his National Security Adviser, Hadley formed part of a loosely constituted group of foreign policy advisers known as the Vulcans who advised presidential candidate Bush in 2000 and were at the core of the presidential transition team following Bush's election victory. Among the other Vulcans who later moved into the first Bush administration were Rice, Colin Powell, Cheney, Richard Perle, Donald Rumsfeld, and Paul Wolfowitz.

...read it all: The Vulcans Consolidate Power by Tom Barry, Counterpunch, 20-21 November 2004

a neocon night of the long knives

2004-11-18T19:23:00.000-08:00

Powell's sacking and Rice's promotion are more than examples of behaviour punished and rewarded. His fall and her rise signal the purge of the CIA and the state department, a neocon night of the long knives.

...read it all: Colin and the crazies by Sidney Blumenthal, Guardian, 18 November 2004

how they spent Vietnam

2004-11-17T14:33:00.000-08:00

James Wolcott:

I can exclusively report what finally drove Powell over the brink. Yes, he was bummed by years of being backstabbed by the neocon hawks, most of whom spent Vietnam masturbating in their dorm rooms.

goosesteppin'

2004-11-17T13:36:00.000-08:00

They're on the march

Big Dick

2004-11-17T10:53:00.000-08:00

What counts in Washington today.

neocon wishlist for new Bush cabinet

2004-11-09T20:52:00.000-08:00

Michael Ledeen, in a National Review column today, The War Cabinet
President Bush needs to reshape his top structure, wants Zell Miller for Secretary of State, Jim Woolsey for Defense, John Bolton or Paul Wolfowitz for National Security Advisor, for the "War Cabinet" he says Bush needs. Thanks to Laura Rozen at The Gadflyer for the link.

four more years

2004-11-08T20:06:00.000-08:00

From Four More Years by James Mann, in Foreign Policy:

The Doomsayers suggest that Bush’s second term is likely to produce further military interventions overseas, along the lines of Iraq in 2003. Perhaps Syria may be the next target of U.S. military power, they suggest, or Iran. They believe that the neoconservatives (that is, officials such as Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz), who were the driving force behind the Bush administration’s preventive war against Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein, will have even greater power and influence, now that the president has won reelection. “Secretary of State Colin Powell is not staying for a second term,” warned one Foreign Service officer, writing under the byline “Anonymous” on Salon.com last month. “When he goes the last bulwark against complete neoconservative control of U.S. foreign policy goes with him.”

The Skeptics contend that Bush’s foreign policy in his second term will turn out to be more cautious and less belligerent than his first, if not by choice, then by compulsion. Whatever some hawks might like to do, the reality is that the Bush administration will face a series of constraints—military, diplomatic, political, and economic—that will curb its ability to launch new preventive wars. Moreover, say adherents of the Skeptic school, the power of the neoconservatives inside the administration will probably be diminished, not augmented, during Bush’s second term.

Bush is likely to appoint a new secretary of state (whether National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice or someone else) who is more subject to the political control of the Bush-Cheney-Karl Rove White House.

But it’s a mistake to leap from there to the judgment that the neoconservatives will have complete control of the second Bush administration. During the last four years, the neocons were the dominant influence on U.S. foreign policy when it came to Iraq (which was no small thing). The neocons did not control the Bush administration’s first-term policy toward China or Russia, which conformed to the classic realist principles of former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger and former National Security Advisor Brent Scowcroft.

And the impact of the Iraq war has served to reduce further the neocons’ clout. The war they so strongly favored has lasted vastly longer than they predicted. It took more U.S. troops and cost much more money than they led the nation to believe. By early this year, even leading conservative Republicans, such as columnist George Will, were vehemently opposing the Iraq war and the larger goal of spreading democracy in the Middle East. That internal Republican opposition has been muted this fall during Bush’s reelection campaign, but it is sure to resurface.

Iran, China, Russia, Latin America ...

2004-11-06T09:41:00.000-08:00

From Neo-Con Agenda: Iran, China, Russia, Latin America ... by Jim Lobe:

An influential foreign-policy neo-conservative with longstanding ties to top hawks in the administration of President George W Bush has laid out what he calls ''a checklist of the work the world will demand of this president and his subordinates in a second term.''

The list, which begins with the destruction of Fallujah in Iraq and ends with the development of ''appropriate strategies'' for dealing with threats posed by China, Russia and ''the emergence of a number of aggressively anti-American regimes in Latin America,'' also calls for ''regime change'' in Iran and North Korea.

The list's author, Frank Gaffney, the founder and president of the Centre for Security Policy (CSP), also warns that Bush should resist any pressure arising from the anticipated demise of Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat to resume peace talks that could result in Israel's giving up ''defensible boundaries.''

While all seven steps listed by Gaffney in an article published Friday morning in the 'National Review Online' have long been favoured by prominent neo-cons, the article itself, 'Worldwide Value', is the first comprehensive compilation to emerge since Bush's re-election Tuesday.

It is also sure to be contested, not just by Democrats who, with the election behind them, are poised to take a more anti-war position on Iraq, but by many conservative Republicans in Congress. They blame the neo-cons for failing to anticipate the quagmire in Iraq and worry their grander ambitions, like those expounded by Gaffney, will bankrupt the Treasury and break an already-overextended military.

Yet its importance as a road map of where neo-conservatives -- who, with the critical help of Vice President Dick Cheney and Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, dominated Bush's foreign policy after the Sep. 11, 2001 attacks on New York and the Pentagon -- want U.S. policy to go, was underlined by Gaffney's listing of the names of his friends in the administration who he said, ''helped the president imprint moral values on American security policy in a way and to an extent not seen since Ronald Reagan's first term.''

In addition to Cheney and Rumsfeld, he cited the most clearly identified -- and controversial -- neo-conservatives serving in the administration: Cheney's chief of staff, I Lewis ''Scooter'' Libby; his top Middle East advisors, John Hannah and David Wurmser; weapons proliferation specialist Robert Joseph and top Mideast aide Elliott Abrams, on the National Security Council (NSC).

Also on the roster are: Deputy Defence Secretary Paul Wolfowitz; Undersecretary for Policy Douglas Feith; Feith's top Mideast aide William Luti, in the Pentagon; Undersecretary for Arms Control and International Security John Bolton, and for global issues, Paula Dobriansky at the State Department.

Virtually all of the same individuals have been cited by critics of the Iraq War, including Democratic lawmakers and retired senior foreign service and military officials, as responsible for hijacking the policy and intelligence process that led to the U.S. invasion of Iraq in March 2003.

world recoils from neocon America

2004-11-06T08:56:00.000-08:00

On Nov. 2, Americans blew their only chance to redeem themselves in the eyes of the world.

The entire world is stunned by the Bush administration's abandonment of a half century of U.S. diplomacy in favor of misguided, unilateralist, "preemptive" naked aggression on totally false pretenses against Iraq. America's allies are amazed at the ignorance manifested by the Bush administration. They are resentful of Bush's "in-your-eye" attitude toward friends who warned Bush against leading America into a quagmire and giving Osama bin Laden the war he wanted.

The world was waiting hopefully for the sensible American people to rectify the ill-advised actions of a rogue neoconservative administration. Instead, Americans placed the stamp of approval on the least justifiable military action since Hitler invaded Poland.

In the eyes of the world, Bush's reelection is proof that Ariel Sharon's neoconservative allies in the Bush administration speak for America after all.

The world's sympathy for America that followed the Sept. 11 attacks has been squandered. If the U.S. suffers terrorist attacks in the future, the world will say that America invited the attacks and got what it asked for.

Europeans and Asians will never be able to comprehend that Bush was reelected because Americans were voting against homosexual marriage and abortion.

The world is simply unable to believe that Americans, so enamored of family values, would vote to send their sons, fathers, husbands, and brothers to unprovoked war unless Americans valued empire and control over oil as more important than their family members.

...from: The American Century Is Over by Paul Craig Roberts, 6 November 2004

becoming the imperial party

2004-11-04T09:07:00.000-08:00

From a The Australian op-ed essay worth reading:

The Republican Party has become the party not just of big government, but of global government. If, as seems likely, the President follows the neo-conservative agenda and takes his war of "liberation" beyond Iraq -- Syria and Iran seem to be the next targets -- the transformation of the Republican Party will be complete: it will become the imperial party, albeit not without dissent from traditional small government conservatives.

they've got China fever, too

2004-11-01T20:58:00.000-08:00

Beyond Iraq, beyond Iran, beyond Syria. . .

The most frightening thing of all is that the Project for a New American Century group, which has made an internal coup in the Bush administration, ultimately has its sights on China. They want to surround, besiege and break up Communist China, as they imagine the US did to the Soviet Union. In many ways, the Bush administration uses North Korea as a proxy for China, saying things about Pyongyang they really would like to say about Beijing. In fact, China is currently increasingly tied to the US-led world economic order and has every impetus to cooperate with the US on most issues. The Chinese take in $80 billion a year more from the US than we make from them. Picking a fight with Beijing, which is a very attractive option for the American Right, would be disastrous.

The Bush administration is full of revolutionaries. They are shaking up the world by military force. They are playing a role familiar in modern history, pioneered by Napoleon Bonaparte, of using overwhelming military superiority to establish new forms of hegemony by appealing to desires for change among neighboring publics. Bonaparte promised the Italians liberty on the French model, but in fact reduced the Italians to a series of French puppet regimes and then he looted the country. So far Bush's Iraq looks increasingly like Bonaparte's Italy in these regards.

At a time of increased radicalization in the global South, at a time when mass terrorism has been made possible by new technologies, the last thing the US should be risking is destabilizing Asia by provoking a series of revolutions.

...says Juan Cole, What's at Stake: The Revolutionary vs. the Statesman

rumsfeld's war

2004-10-31T09:19:00.000-08:00

Rumsfeld's War, the PBS Frontline documentary, is online.

why the neocons let Zarqawi get away

2004-10-31T08:54:00.000-08:00

Why didn't the Bush administration kill Abu Musab al-Zarqawi when it had the chance?

That it had opportunities to take out the Jordanian-born jihadist has been clear since Secretary of State Colin Powell devoted a long section of his February 2003 speech to the United Nations Security Council. In those remarks, which were given to underscore the threat posed by Saddam Hussein, Powell dwelt at length on the terrorist camp in Khurmal, in the pre-invasion Kurdish enclave. It was at that camp that Zarqawi, other jihadists who had fled Afghanistan, and Kurdish radicals were training and producing the poison ricin and cyanide.

....In recent months, the mystery of the administration's inaction has only grown. News reports—including, most recently, one in the Wall Street Journal this week—make it clear that military leaders and the CIA felt Zarqawi was a threat that could and should be removed. On at least three occasions between mid-2002 and the invasion of Iraq, the Pentagon presented plans to the White House to destroy the Khurmal camp. Each time the White House declined to act or did not respond at all.

It is impossible to see that refusal as anything other than an enormous blunder.

....It seems never to have occurred to President Bush and his advisers that in a globalized world, where borders are porous and technologies of massive destructiveness are available, hidden networks can be far more dangerous than a state, which can be threatened and contained. Yet that surely has been the lesson of the last three years. It is an added irony that the administration's inability to fully assimilate the threat from "non-state actors" is leading, thanks in part to Zarqawi, to the failure of its effort to reinvent Iraq as a stable democracy in the Middle East.

...from: Holy Zarqawi: Why Bush let Iraq's top terrorist walk, by Daniel Benjamin, "a fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, was director for counterterrorism on the National Security Council staff."

america's stalinist right

2004-10-28T16:22:00.000-07:00

It is a cliche of American conservatives that liberal and even centrist Democrats are sympathetic to Communism. Yet today it is the Republican Party leadership and rank-and-file right-wing activists who are using Stalinist techniques in an attempt to intimidate opposition, create an alternate, ideologically-based "reality," and enforce acceptance of that false "reality." Behind these techniques is an even more frightening reality - Stalinist-style rhetoric and ways of thought now dominate the political discourses of the American Right.

I should state right now that obviously the Bush administration and its supporters do not have Stalinist economic policies and do not engage in domestic mass murder of the Stalinist sort. I'm saying rather that there are important parallels in mentality, propaganda, and methods of intimidating dissent between the Republican Party leadership today and the Stalinist regime

As a student of the origins of Stalinist culture and propaganda, I have become more and more aware of the Stalinist tactics and mentality of much of the American Right since the virulent Clinton-hating publicity campaigns of the 1990s. The words "treason," "traitors," "unity," and "patriotism" are a good place to start in understanding this. Stalin was a great patriot and hunter of "traitors." Accusing political opponents of treason, lack of patriotism, or lack of resolution in the face of an external threat is quintessentially Stalinist. It has become a staple of Republican rhetoric since the September 11, 2001 al-Qaeda massacre. On right-wing talk radio and conservative websites, and in publications of such commentators as Ann Coulter it is routine to accuse the entire Democratic party of treason. These accusations erode the assumption, essential for a functioning democracy, that there can be a patriotic "loyal opposition" to the party in power.

Relentless insistence on unity, on the existence of an unprecedented and overwhelming external threat, and on the total moral depravity of political opposition were all integral to Stalinist propaganda, and they are a growing part of conservative rhetoric in the United States today. Hate campaigns against "wealthy" peasants, "bourgeois" engineers and professors, and "enemies of the people" became central to Stalinism. A hate campaign against gays and lesbians is a keystone of President Bush's reelection campaign, and expressions of hatred against all Muslims on right-wing websites and by talk show commentators such as Jay Severin and Michael Savage are common. "Liberals" are constant targets of charges of treason and psychopathology. Calls for their elimination (means unspecified) by Rush Limbaugh and his ilk are not uncommon.

....continues: America's Stalinist Right by Matthew Lenoe Assistant Professor of History, Assumption College, author of CLOSER TO THE MASSES. STALINIST CULTURE, SOCIAL REVOLUTION, AND SOVIET NEWSPAPERS (Harvard University Press, 2004)

massaging Iraq data

2004-10-21T19:54:00.000-07:00

From Senator Says Pentagon Office Massaged Iraq Data:

A Democratic U.S. Senator on Thursday accused a senior Pentagon official of distorting intelligence information to back claims of links between Iraq and al Qaeda in the run-up to last year's U.S.-led invasion.

A report issued by Sen. Carl Levin, the top Democrat on the Armed Services Committee, also questioned assertions of pre-war links between Baghdad and Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, who since the invasion has emerged as a leader in the anti-U.S. insurgency.

The report, compiled by the committee's Democratic staff, criticized the Office of Special Plans, which operated under the auspices of Douglas Feith, undersecretary of defense for policy.

It was released less than two weeks before the U.S. presidential election, in which President Bush's handling of Iraq is a major issue.

The report said Feith's office looked at evidence "through a different lens, one that was predisposed to finding a significant relationship between Iraq and al Qaeda."

Democrats have frequently accused Feith and other hawks in the Bush administration of manipulating data supplied by the CIA and other sources to bolster the case for invading Iraq.

The 46-page report argued that Pentagon assertions of a link between al Qaeda and Iraq's President Saddam Hussein were not supported by intelligence reports on which they were purportedly based.

GOP long knives out for the neocons

2004-10-17T09:20:00.000-07:00

That's the thrust of a just-published US News and World Report article. Excerpt:

The Republicans' united front masks a growing struggle sparked by the president's hawkish and ambitious foreign policy--one that may burst into the open soon after the polls close, whoever wins. "Most conservatives are not comfortable with the neocons," Viguerie says. He decries the neocons as "overbearing" and "immensely influential. . . . They want to be the world's policeman. We don't feel our role is to be Don Quixote, righting all the wrongs in the world."

Viguerie's disquiet is widely shared by veteran conservative activists, who are increasingly blaming neoconservatives for placing Iraq at the center of the war on terrorism. "I'm hearing more discussion about foreign policy and the direction of the country than I have heard probably in the last 35 years," says Paul Weyrich, chairman and CEO of the Free Congress Foundation.

more torture news from Guantanamo, too

2004-10-16T15:37:00.000-07:00

Broad Use Cited of Harsh Tactics at Base in Cuba by Neil Lewis, in the New York Times.

Many detainees at Guantánamo Bay were regularly subjected to harsh and coercive treatment, several people who worked in the prison said in recent interviews, despite longstanding assertions by military officials that such treatment had not occurred except in some isolated cases.

....In guided tours of Guantánamo provided to the news media and members of Congress, the military authorities contended that the system of rewards and punishments affected only issues like whether the inmates could be deprived of books, blankets and toilet articles. The interrogation sessions themselves, the officials consistently said, did not employ any harsh treatment but were devised only to build a trusting relationship between the interrogator and the detainee.

lest we forget

2004-10-16T09:24:00.000-07:00

From Michael Massing's article in the New York Times Sunday Book Review:

Abu Ghraib was not the work of a few bad apples, but the direct consequence, Hersh says, of ''the reliance of George Bush and Donald Rumsfeld on secret operations and the use of coercion -- and eye-for-an-eye retribution -- in fighting terrorism.''

...yet another reason to run Bush and his neocon crew out of office next month.

2004-10-15T11:06:00.000-07:00

from FreewayBlogger.com

the power of nightmares

2004-10-14T21:45:00.000-07:00

From a Guardian story about "The Power of Nightmares," a documentary set to air on BBC on October 20, which, says writer and producer Adam Curtis

seeks to overturn much of what is widely believed about Osama bin Laden and al-Qaida. The latter, it argues, is not an organised international network. It does not have members or a leader. It does not have "sleeper cells". It does not have an overall strategy. In fact, it barely exists at all, except as an idea about cleansing a corrupt world through religious violence.

....Bill Durodie, director of the international centre for security analysis at King's College London, says: "The reality [of the al-Qaida threat to the west] has been essentially a one-off. There has been one incident in the developed world since 9/11 [the Madrid bombings]. There's no real evidence that all these groups are connected." Crispin Black, a senior government intelligence analyst until 2002, is more cautious but admits the terrorist threat presented by politicians and the media is "out of date and too one-dimensional. We think there is a bit of a gulf between the terrorists' ambition and their ability to pull it off."

....The Power of Nightmares began as an investigation of something else, the rise of modern American conservatism. Curtis was interested in Leo Strauss, a political philosopher at the university of Chicago in the 50s who rejected the liberalism of postwar America as amoral and who thought that the country could be rescued by a revived belief in America's unique role to battle evil in the world. Strauss's certainty and his emphasis on the use of grand myths as a higher form of political propaganda created a group of influential disciples such as Paul Wolfowitz, now the US deputy defence secretary. They came to prominence by talking up the Russian threat during the cold war and have applied a similar strategy in the war on terror.

As Curtis traced the rise of the "Straussians", he came to a conclusion that would form the basis for The Power of Nightmares. Straussian conservatism had a previously unsuspected amount in common with Islamism: from origins in the 50s, to a formative belief that liberalism was the enemy, to an actual period of Islamist-Straussian collaboration against the Soviet Union during the war in Afghanistan in the 80s (both movements have proved adept at finding new foes to keep them going). Although the Islamists and the Straussians have fallen out since then, as the attacks on America in 2001 graphically demonstrated, they are in another way, Curtis concludes, collaborating still: in sustaining the "fantasy" of the war on terror.

how fragile is this democracy?

2004-10-13T09:07:00.000-07:00

From Investigative journalist Seymour Hersh spills the secrets of the Iraq quagmire and the war on terror:

"How could eight or nine neoconservatives come and take charge of this government?" he asked. "They overran the bureaucracy, they overran the Congress, they overran the press, and they overran the military! So you say to yourself, How fragile is this democracy?"

The article includes a link to a webcast of Hersh's talk.

Referring to Hersh's statement, Juan Cole adds:

Apparently you just need 8 positions to take over the US government: Chief, Near East and South Asia division of the Department of Defense; Undersecretary of Defense for Policy; Deputy Secretary of Defense; Secretary of Defense; Undersecretary of State for Arms Control; Chairman, Defense Policy Board; Vice President; Chief of Staff to the Vice President; and Deputy National Security Adviser. Of course, it only works if you have a president who needs radio signals to be told what to say and do (see below). If you don't know who held the positions mentioned during 2002-2003, do look them up on google.com, and then compare the holders of these offices to the members of the Project for a New American Century and the signers of the 1996 policy statement done for Israel's Likud Party, "A Clean Break." Both "A Clean Break" and the PNAC documents insisted back in the 1990s on a war against Iraq.

spy v. spy

2004-10-10T08:38:00.000-07:00

The Telegraph reports that, tired of taking the blame for the neoconservadroid rush to war in Iraq, the old guard CIA is fighting back.

while we're worrying about the elections . . .

2004-10-08T13:45:00.000-07:00

Sidelined Neo-Cons Stoke Future Fires, by Jim Lobe, who writes:

Echoing increasingly threatening noises from the government of Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon about preventing Iran from developing a nuclear weapon, neo-cons are calling for Washington to undertake covert action, at the very least, to oust what some of them call the ''terror masters'' in Tehran as part of a more general ''World War IV'' against alleged Arab and Islamic extremism.

Some neo-cons are even complaining that if Bush had been serious about the ''war on terrorism'', he should have taken on Iran after Afghanistan, rather than Iraq.

''Had we seen the war for what it was, we would not have started with Iraq, but with Iran, the mother of modern Islamic terrorism, the creator of Hezbollah, the ally of al-Qaeda, the sponsor of Zarqawi, the longtime sponsor of Fatah and the backbone of Hamas'', wrote part-time Pentagon consultant Michael Ledeen of the American Enterprise Institute (AEI) this week.

contra war corporatism

2004-10-07T15:21:00.000-07:00

Link to an intriguing video, in a Constructivist design mode, about the neocon Project for the New American Century, via Boing Boing.

rats blame each other, jump off sinking ship

2004-10-06T09:57:00.000-07:00

Juan Cole tells the story with links to back it up.

how wrong were they about Iraq?

2004-10-06T09:53:00.000-07:00

Tom Tomorrow knows, and shows it in this go-for-the-jugular comic strip.

now they tell us, continued

2004-10-05T09:15:00.000-07:00

Paul Bremer, the former U.S. civilian administrator in Iraq says "the United States 'paid a big price' for not having enough troops on the ground after the overthrow of Saddam Hussein's regime," according to reports by CNN and others today:

L. Paul Bremer, speaking Monday at an insurance conference in White Sulphur Springs, West Virginia, said "horrid" looting was occurring when he arrived to head the U.S.-led Coalition Provisional Authority in Baghdad on May 6, 2003.

"We paid a big price for not stopping it because it established an atmosphere of lawlessness," Bremer said. "We never had enough troops on the ground."

That "lawlessness" has contributed to the death and injuries of thousands of US troops and an untold number of Iraqi civilians since Bush declared "mission accomplished" last year.

John Kerry jumped on Bremer's admission, calling for neoconservadroid demon, VP "Expletive Deleted" Cheney to acknowledge the mistakes made in Iraq by the Bush Administration, according to an ABC report:

"I hope tonight Mr. Cheney can acknowledge those mistakes," the Democratic presidential candidate said. "I hope Mr. Cheney can take responsibility."

rummy does the crayfish shuffle

2004-10-04T19:36:00.002-07:00

Now he tells us: asked about a connection between Saddam Hussein and al Qaeda, Rumsfeld told the Council on Foreign Relations answered, ""To my knowledge, I have not seen any strong, hard evidence that links the two."

Will VP "Expletive Deleted" Cheney continue to claim a link between Hussein and al Qaeda in his debate with John Edwards tomorrow night?

Perle v. Black

2004-10-03T09:22:00.000-07:00

What Is It With Neocons and Libel? offers the latest in the ongoing Richard Perle v. Lord Black saga.

blame American neocons, not all Americans

2004-10-02T15:33:00.000-07:00

From the Associated Press report Mourning Iraqis Blame U.S. Troops for Massacre of Children:

Families of the 35 children who died in a string of bombings in Baghdad blamed American troops for the tragedy, accusing them of attracting insurgents to a ceremony where the attacks occurred.

By Friday, tents had sprung up in the el-Amel neighborhood in Baghdad to accommodate mourners who gathered to share their grief from the Thursday attack. In the carnage, several explosions ripped into a crowd gathered to celebrate the inauguration of a new, much needed sewage plant.

Residents said that before the start of the celebration, U.S. soldiers called upon the children through loudspeakers to join the crowd, promising them sweets. There were an unusually large number around because the long school holidays were nearing an end.

"I blame the Americans for this tragedy. They wanted to make human shields out of our children. They should have kept the children away from danger," said Abdel-Hadi al-Badri, a cleric a the al-Mubashroun al-Ashra mosque, breaking down in tears during Friday prayers.

Al-Badri's son lost his right leg in the explosion after he ignored his father's warnings to stay away from the U.S. troops....

"The Americans are the first terrorists and the people who carried out the attack are the second terrorists," he added. It was the largest number of children killed in any single insurgent attack since the conflict erupted 17 months ago.

Al-Badri's is a common lament here. Confronted by daily bombings, kidnappings, deadly crossfires and soaring violent crime, many Iraqis blame most of their ills on the Americans. Many say that they and their children would not be dying today had the U.S. not invaded their country 17 months ago.

Iraq failure means neocons may have to slow world conquest plan

2004-10-02T11:07:00.000-07:00

....from Experts say Iraq war precludes similar future engagements in today's San Francisco Chronicle, by James Sterngold:

....the violent insurgency in Iraq, which has tied down 140,000 U.S. troops, has all but removed Americans' stomach for a similar pre-emptive engagement against an enemy who has not actually launched or prepared an imminent attack on the United States.

Iraq "will leave a long and damaging legacy," said Fred Ikle, a senior government arms control expert for decades who has argued that the United States must be more willing to use military might to achieve its goals. "It will inhibit us more than is good for our future. We fumbled."

Ikle was one of the founders of the Project for the New American Century, a neoconservative group that has long pressed for a more muscular American military posture, and includes Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz -- key architects of the Iraq war -- among its members.

Ikle's views are echoed by other prominent neoconservative thinkers.

"The appetite for this kind of action in the country is pretty low at the moment," said Max Boot, a senior fellow in national security studies at the Council on Foreign Relations.

Boot, an early supporter of the Iraq war, said that the United States is likely to launch small-scale pre-emptive strikes as needed in the future, much as Israel does against its enemies, but not the kind of large-scale attacks that were at the center of the Bush doctrine's aim of pressuring enemies to change or risk being destroyed.

"If, by some miracle, Iraq looks better in a few years, maybe there will be greater interest in the idea," said Boot.

is Iran next?

2004-09-28T14:28:00.000-07:00

That's the title of an In These Times article by Tom Barry about the neocon spy scandal now unfolding in the Pentagon. An excerpt:

From the point of view of the Middle East restructurers, Iran represents an increasing threat to regional stability. Not only does it already have long-range missiles, and might be developing nuclear weapons, its close ties with the Shiite majority in Iraq do not bode well for the type of political and economic restructuring the Bush administration planned for Iraq. Moreover, neoconservatives and Israelis have long complained that Iran backs the Hezbollah militias in Lebanon and is fueling the Shiite rebels in Iraq. Effectively, Washington has already declared war on Iran. Being named by President Bush as part of the “Axis of Evil” triad targeted in the global war on terrorism and the new U.S. strategy of preemptive war has made Iran increasingly nervous.

W.'s Mini-Me

2004-09-25T21:08:00.000-07:00

Just as Mr. Cheney, Rummy and the neocons turned W. into a host body for their old schemes to knock off Saddam, transform the military and set up a pre-emption doctrine to strike at allies and foes that threatened American hyperpower supremacy, so now W. has turned Mr. Allawi into a host body for the Panglossian palaver that he believes will get him re-elected.

. . . . read it all: Dance of the Marionettes by Maureen Dowd

symbionts & parasites & neoconservadroids

2004-09-24T19:53:00.000-07:00

In Symbionts and Parasites, Ernest Partridge writes:

With the rise of so-called "neo-conservatism" (in fact, a radicalism), the investing class has transformed itself from an economic symbiont - prospering conjointly with its producer-partner - into an economic parasite - impoverishing its host, the workers, and thus, eventually, itself. Like a heart-worm devouring the source and sustenance of its very life, the oligarchs are squeezing the productivity and the disposable income from the workers, which is to say, the well-springs of the oligarch's wealth.

go massive

2004-09-22T11:32:00.000-07:00

In a coda to his worth-reading series, High Plains Grifter: The Life and Crimes of George W. Bush, Jeffrey St. Clair writes:

As Seymour Hersh discloses in Chain of Command, the decision to invade Iraq, high on the agenda of the neo-cons in Cheney's office and the Pentagon since the election, had been given the greenlight almost immediately after the planes hit the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. At 2.40 in the afternoon on September 11, Rumsfeld convened a meeting of his top staffers. According to notes taken by an aide, Rumsfeld declared that wanted to "hit" Iraq, even though he well knew that Iraq was not behind the attack. "Go massive," ordered Rumsfeld. "Sweep it all up. Things related and not."

For Rumsfeld and his gang, 9/11 was an opportunity more than a hardship. It augured a war without end, a war without rules, a war without fiscal constraints, a war where anything was permitted and few questions asked. Almost immediately the Secretary of Defense conjured up his own personal hit squad, Joint Task Force-121, which he endearingly refers to as his "manhunters." Though we wouldn't hear about it for months, this operation launched the kidnappings, wholesale round-ups, assassinations, and incidents of torture that are only now coming partially to light.

Of course, it can't all be pinned on Rumsfeld and his band of bureaucratic thugs. It goes right to the top. On February 7, 2002, Bush signed an executive order exempting captured members of al-Qaeda and the Taliban from the protections of the Geneva Conventions. With that stroke of the pen, Bush affixed his imprimatur to the prosecution of his wars unbound by the constraints of international law. That secret imperial decree set into motion the downward spiral of sadism-as-government-policy which led directly to the torture chambers of Camp Cropper and Abu Ghraib and obliterated the last molecule of moral authority from Bush's global war. Of course, such concerns are mere trifles to these cruise missile crusaders.

illegal? sez who?

2004-09-21T15:32:00.000-07:00

Media watch organization FAIR covers the ground CNN's Lou Dobbs missed in his knee-jerk reaction to UN Secretary General Kofi Annan's assertion that the US war on Iraq is illegal - and in the process reminds us that neoconservadroid Richard Perle thought so, too:

For the record, Annan would certainly not be the first person to make such "outrageous" comments. In fact, last year the prominent neoconservative hawk Richard Perle, who serves on the Pentagon's Defense Policy Board, indicated that he thought that the invasion violated international law (Guardian, 11/20/03), which Perle said "would have required us to leave Saddam Hussein alone." Perle argued that French intransigence left the U.S. with "no practical mechanism consistent with the rules of the U.N. for dealing with Saddam Hussein," and therefore, Perle said, "I think in this case international law stood in the way of doing the right thing."

these guys believe it

2004-09-20T07:28:00.000-07:00

Seymour Hersh, in an interview about his new book, Chain of Command: The Road From 9/11 to Abu Ghraib:

Democracy would flow like water out of a fountain. These guys believe it. They believe WMD. There's no fallback with these guys. These guys are utopians. They're like Trotskyites. They believe in permanent revolution. They really believe. They believe that they could go in with few forces. They believed that once they went in it would happen quick. Iran would get the message. What they call occupied Lebanon would get the lesson. Even the Saudis would change.

headlines tell the sad neoconservadroid story

2004-09-17T15:11:00.000-07:00

Bush Rejects Bleak Iraq Intel Report

New US Inspector: Iraq Had No WMD

Growing Consensus That Iraq Is Hopeless

Insurgents in Iraq More Powerful Than Ever

General: Iraq Is 'Far Graver Than Vietnam'

Car Bomb Kills 13 at Baghdad Police Checkpoint

US Continues Air Strikes on Fallujah, More Killed

US Says New Photos Show Iran Plans Nuclear Bomb

GOP Senators Rebuke Bush for Plan to Divert Iraq Funds

GIs Threatened: Re-Enlist or Face Deployment to Iraq

...from Antiwar.com this afternoon.

another corrupt, Bush Administration neoconservadroid

2004-09-16T08:23:00.000-07:00

From: An unsavory character on Bush team, in the San Diego Union-Tribune:

Richard Perle, a foreign policy guru who has oozed his way through Republican administrations for two decades making a fortune as he went, has met his match in Conrad Black, the former head of Hollinger International, the U.S.-based newspaper conglomerate. Black stepped down as Hollinger CEO after being accused by shareholders of being a crook. As Black goes down, Perle, who worked for the Bush administration and deserves as much credit for the Iraq war as anyone, is going with him. A special committee investigating Hollinger's financial losses accuses both men of corruption.

...Perle turned down an appointment in the Bush Defense Department in order to take the position as chairman of the policy board and continue his business interests, which center around Trireme Partners Ltd., a company that invests in defense and security companies and has Kissinger as one of its advisers. Perle was forced out of his Pentagon position when it became public this year that Global Crossing was paying him to lobby the Pentagon at the same time he was heading the Pentagon advisory group. His resignation came two weeks after allegations by investigative reporter Seymour Hersh in The New Yorker that Perle used his position as Pentagon adviser to try to profit from the war in Iraq.

....How comforting to know U.S. foreign policy – especially the war power – is in the hands of such principled people. If Bush is re-elected, rest assured Richard Perle will be back.

[Richard Perle caricature from New York Review of Books]

portrait of a neoconservadroid

2004-09-16T02:58:00.000-07:00

Douglas Feith

A vocal advocate of U.S. intervention in the Middle East and for the hardline policies of the Likud party in Israel, Feith has been involved in or overseen the activities of two controversial Pentagon operations – the Defense Policy Board, whose former head Richard Perle resigned after concerns arose about conflicts of interest between his board duties and business dealings, and the Office of Special Plans (OSP), which allegedly misrepresented intelligence on Iraq to support administration policies. Feith's office not only housed the Office of Special Plans and other special intelligence operations associated with the Near East and South Asia (NESA) office and the Office of Northern Gulf Affairs but also the office of Undersecretary of Defense for Intelligence Stephen Cambone, who directed military policy on interrogations of the Guantanamo Bay detainees and then arranged for the transfer of the base's commanding officer, Maj. General Geoffrey Miller, to the Abu Ghraib prison in an effort to extract more information from Iraqi prisoners.

Read it all: Douglas Feith: Portrait of a Neoconservative by Tom Barry

planning WWIV

2004-09-15T02:18:00.000-07:00

At "World War IV: Why We Fight, Whom We Fight, How We Fight," Wednesday, 29 September, at the Mayflower Hotel in Washington, D.C., featured speakers include famous neoconservadroids and fellow-travelers Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz, Senator Jon Kyl , R. James Woolsey, Norman Podhoretz, Eliot Cohen, Rachel Ehrenfeld, and others, according to Steve Clemons at The Washington Note.

tectonic tactics

2004-09-14T07:46:00.000-07:00

Make no mistake - Bush's advisers believe that the US, guided by their policies, can change the world. National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice argued that the geopolitical "tectonic plates" started shifting after September 11 as they had after World War II. Consider that comparison. That period witnessed America's determination to contain Soviet power, to reconstruct Europe and to establish a global economic system. It was the most audacious peacetime decision to use US power to reshape the planet....Americans have always been uncomfortable exercising power for naked national interest. Instead, as historian Walter McDougall argues, Americans picture their role in the world as an extension of their personal values - promoting liberty, spreading democracy, and fighting evil. Moreover, Bush's advisers believe that ordinary Americans cannot comprehend and should be shielded from complex foreign policy (or even energy policy). Knowing that the US will not go to war based on hazy geopolitical trend lines, Bush's advisers justified their grand strategy in tangible terms - chemical weapons, links to terrorists, and tyranny. September 11 provided an opportunity to cloak geopolitical transformation in righteous intervention.

...from: What the neo-cons can't tell Americans , by Richard Daniel Ewing, Nixon Institute

how did they do it?

2004-09-13T08:56:00.000-07:00

From an excerpt of Seymour M. Hersh's new book, Chain of Command: The Road from 9/11 to Abu Ghraib:

There is so much about this presidency that we don’t know, and may never learn. Some of the most important questions are not even being asked. How did they do it? How did eight or nine neoconservatives who believed that a war in Iraq was the answer to international terrorism get their way? How did they redirect the government and rearrange long-standing American priorities and policies with so much ease? How did they overcome the bureaucracy, intimidate the press, mislead the Congress, and dominate the military? Is our democracy that fragile? I have tried, in this book, to describe some of the mechanisms used by the White House—the stovepiping of intelligence, the reliance on Ahmad Chalabi, the refusal to hear dissenting opinions, the difficulty of getting straight talk about military operations gone bad, and the inability—or unwillingness—of the President and his senior aides to distinguish between Muslims who supported terrorism and those who abhorred it.

hijacking catastrophe

2004-09-13T08:03:00.000-07:00

From Robert Jensen's review of the documentary film Hijacking Catastrophe: 9/11, Fear & the Selling of American Empire in Counterpunch today:

...the lies that led to the Iraq War are only part of a bigger story, the most important story of the past three years: The Bush administration's manipulation of the tragedy of 9/11 to extend and intensify the longstanding U.S. project of empire building (and the complicity of most Democrats in that endeavor).

No publication or network in the mainstream of U.S. journalism has offered an independent, critical analysis of that project. Only a few journalists, mostly on the margins, have even dared to take a crack at it. The best consistent work has been in the foreign press or the alternative media in the United States.

....The film concentrates on two major topics: The neoconservative agenda for U.S. domination of the world, which was created long before 9/11, and the selling of that agenda to the U.S. public after 9/11.

The first story goes back to the early 1990s and the end of the Cold War, when policy planners such as Paul Wolfowitz (current deputy secretary of defense) were devising a more aggressive foreign policy and military posture to allow the United States to capitalize on the collapse of the Soviet Union and to dominate the globe in ways that had not previously been possible. At the time, the plans were considered so extreme that the first Bush administration reined in these ideological fanatics; the U.S. empire could go forward but not in such radical form.

During the remainder of the 1990s, these neoconservative planners chafed at what they saw as an insufficiently aggressive approach to expansion of the empire in the Clinton administration. The Project for the New American Century, a neoconservative think tank, was created as a vehicle for promoting this ideology, which was able to take center stage with the George W. Bush administration.

Resistance to such an aggressive and dangerous project remained, however, and the project still had to be sold to the U.S. public. The attacks of 9/11 created the political climate which made that possible.

today Iraq, tomorrow Chechnya?

2004-09-08T01:46:00.000-07:00

An op-ed piece in today's Guardian alleges that US neoconservadroids are helping to manipulate Russian press coverage of the Belsen nightmare, as part of an ongoing program to promote international (i.e., US, presumbly) intervention in Chechnya.

pot calls kettle black

2004-09-07T08:10:00.000-07:00

That would be the Darth Vader of Middle East politics, Richard Perle, as described by Josh Marshall, responding to a New York Times article about Perle's shenanigans as a corporate director.

Iran-Contra II?

2004-08-29T12:43:00.000-07:00

That's the title of a must-read Washington Monthly investigative report by Joshua Micah Marshall, Laura Rozen, and Paul Glastris, about the still-unfolding neocon spy scandal at the Department of Defense. Looks like a secret Bush Administration program to launch the US into war with Iran has been busted.

spy in neoconservadroids' lair?

2004-08-28T12:07:00.000-07:00

Middle East expert, Juan Cole discusses the unfolding spy scandal, while Jim Lobe details the neocons in Feith's fief.

why neoconservadroids act that way & what to do about it at the RNC

2004-08-28T10:00:00.000-07:00

In one of the most affluent nations in the world, how can we explain the persistence of the ignorance, avarice, and hatred of life epitomized by the Bush Administration and its supporters? How can humans continue in behavior which overwhelming evidence shows is maddening, brutalizing, and ultimately self-destructive? Are human beings naturally greedy and stupid, or are they conditioned that way?

The pioneering research of Wilhelm Reich suggests that the answers to these questions lie in the unnatural, life-negating ethos of our mechanized civilization, where knowledge has become game-show trivia, love a consumer commodity, and work an unconscious automatism.

....Although sexual orgasm is the most dramatic discharge of biological energy, music, dance, poetry, healthy athletics, and pleasurable work have similar life-affirmative effects on the human organism. In all of these, we surrender to the rhythms of the body’s inspiration and respiration, the pulse of the heartbeat and blood, and shed the fearful egocentric grasping characteristic of capitalist culture, finding connection to our fellow humans and the cosmos. To the right is a diagram depicting the arc of the sexual act in orgastically potent men and women.

However, in many individuals—indeed, too many – the heavy character-armoring encouraged by repressive, parasitic social relations serves to inhibit the natural flow of Orgone bio-energy, and often the only way these people can experience pleasure is through militarism, sado-masochism, greed, and cruelty. Typically, these individuals have stiff, spastic facial expressions and are unable to move their pelvises except in a constrained, robotic manner. The BOP Collective has obtained revealing data on the frustrated orgasm arcs of a number of such people in the Bush Administration, shown below:

Not only does the bound energy of the incrusted emotions produce fascist anal hysteria, but also carcinogenic molecular free radicals, also shown. The heavily armored individual is not only a menace to society, but to himself. Because of this bioenergetic distortion, a palpable aura of rage and hatred emanates from these pathological people – this can be identified as Deadly Orgone Energy (DOR). In large groups, such as the Republican National Convention, the great quantity of DOR produced can have a crippling, evil effect for miles around.

...from: Brooklyn Orgastic Politics Collective (BOP-C), a group with big plans:

On Thursday, September 2nd, for several hours prior to and during George Bush’s re-nomination ceremony, the Brooklyn Orgastic Politics Collective (BOP-C) will be conducting Orgone operations with several of our Cloudbusters, attempting to suck the fascism from the Republican National Convention at Madison Square Garden. From an undisclosed location on the Brooklyn waterfront, we will be redirecting the flow of Life Energy above the deadly concentrations of hatred and greed accumulating in midtown Manhattan. If indeed our theories prove correct, it may be possible to reduce the entire convention floor to a quivering Saturnalia. The moans of Love shall ring out across the Land!

"they remain determined"

2004-08-27T08:56:00.000-07:00

....despite setbacks, all the key neocons in the administration retain their posts, and they remain determined to realize their bold world-changing agenda. While many predict their imminent demise, and while I would very much like to believe them, I agree with Sieff that the neocons are fiercely determined, have great staying power, and remain highly dangerous to the world---most immediately, to Iran and Syria.

...from: Neocon Musings

an odd breed

2004-08-26T12:52:00.000-07:00

They are an odd breed, these men. They hate dictatorship, unless they're doing the dictating.

...from: Beware the Vulcans: Why this US Vote is so Critical by Lawrence Martin

neoconservadroids down but not out

2004-08-25T08:53:00.000-07:00

...says Justin Raimondo, in The Neocon Civil War .

neoconservadroids send in the ghouls

2004-08-24T10:26:00.000-07:00

American troops search coffins as a matter of routine at holy city's sprawling cemetery:

"Hurry up," he urged the Salmans. "The other day the Americans fired at a funeral group."

....Near the graveyard entrance soldiers had stopped a Toyota van with another coffin tied to the roof. Specialist Brian Phillips, 21, was ordered to open the lid.

"Oh my Jesus Christ," he exclaimed. "He's got a f****** bullet hole right through his face. It's disgusting."

He jumped down from the van and vomited in a clump of bushes.

The mother of the dead man began wailing and shouting.

"Hey," Staff Sgt Brandon George shouted. "Grandma over there is freaking out. Calm her down." He explained: "The problem is that we've found some coffins with weapons in them."

He ordered his translator to ask if any of the relatives were members of the Mahdi army. Digital photographs were taken of the body.

Some in the funeral party said the man had been killed in a family feud; others claimed he had been shot by an American helicopter. With strong suspicions that he had been a Mahdi fighter, the relatives were told to stay put for further questioning.

how scary are the neoconservadroids?

2004-08-23T10:09:00.000-07:00

Even right-winger Pat Buchanan is issuing another warning:

Enter the "cakewalk" neoconservatives. Though disastrously wrong about Iraq's receptivity to U.S.-imposed democracy, and though they face disgrace and oblivion if Bush loses, they have one last card to play: That is to have America widen her wars with Afghanistan and Iraq with a preemptive strike on Iran's nuclear facilities. For the neoconservatives, Iraq was simply Phase II of "World War IV" for imperial domination of the Middle East and serial destruction of the regimes in Iraq, Syria, Iran and Saudi Arabia, as well as of Hezbollah, Hamas and the Palestinian Authority. The neocons have not abandoned this imperial project. Nor has Bush removed a single one from power, though they may yet cost him his presidency. And the neoconservative commentariat is again beating the drums for war – this time on Iran. This is their hole card. If they can ignite a new war, the country may forget how they bungled the old war. In escalation lies vindication.

...read it all: Neocons Seek Vindication in Escalation, published today at Antiwar.com.

cowardly Bush & neocon clique pursue absurd Iraq slaughter

2004-08-22T10:52:00.000-07:00

"AC-130s fired their cannons at Mahdi Army positions in the sacred Valley of Peace cemetery near the holy shrine of Ali,"Juan Cole reports.

Somebody please remind me why the US is there in the first place.
Something about removing a dictator who slaughtered his own people, last I heard.
Now Bush has taken his place.

Rummy's back

2004-08-20T11:31:00.000-07:00

"The nation's top dog of war is frisky again," reports Normon Solomon, who observes, "When Rumsfeld comes in for harsh media criticism, he takes a licking and keeps on ticking ... like a time bomb."

NYC to GOP: Drop Dead

2004-08-18T20:52:00.000-07:00

That's the headline of Ted Rall's latest column, expressing a deep disgust that sounds and feels real. Down with the Neoconservadroid Ruling Elite!

no good deed goes unpunished

2004-08-17T16:13:00.000-07:00

Soon we'll be seeing the neoconservative funded group called "Pussies in Boots for Truth" calling PFC Hammer a liar and swearing that they personally witnessed the distinguished feline smuggling cheese to terrorist rats and smoking catnip from a bong.

...read it all and check out the great photo: Cat Sees More Battle than President Gomer

calling out the cowardly, or at least hypocritical, expletive-deleted, flip-flopping neoconservadroid veep

2004-08-17T09:13:00.000-07:00

Says CNN:

DES MOINES, Iowa (AP) -- Vice President Dick Cheney's questioning of John Kerry's war record and his ability to protect America is "cowardly," Sen. Tom Harkin said Monday.

"It just outrages me that someone who got five deferments during Vietnam and said he had 'other priorities' at that time would say that," said the Iowa Democrat, a former Navy fighter pilot.He accused President Bush and his vice president of "resorting to dirty attacks on John Kerry's war record."

"They're running scared because John Kerry has a war record and they don't," said Harkin. "What he (Cheney) is doing and what he is saying is cowardly. The actions are cowardly.

...Harkin said that it angered him to hear tough talk from Cheney.

"When I hear this coming from Dick Cheney, who was a coward, who would not serve during the Vietnam War, it makes my blood boil," said Harkin.

"He'll be tough, but he'll be tough with someone else's kid's blood," said Harkin....

Juan Cole calls Cheney's attacks hypocritical if not cowardly, accuses him of "arrogant, unilateral war-mongering," and gives him a history lesson on how "sensitivity" has in fact helped the US win wars in the past, while The Daily Howler catches Cheney in an embarrassing "sensitivity" flip-flop.

The Rightwing Roots of Bush's Foreign Policy

2004-08-16T11:02:00.000-07:00

That's the title of a History News Network essay worth reading by San Francisco State University historian, Jules Tygiel, who observes:

Polls show that Americans have grown increasingly disillusioned with President George W. Bush’s invasion of Iraq. Most people view this as a product of the Bush administration’s hubris or mistakes rather than a failure of its ideology. Yet what is particularly striking is how much the problems in Iraq stem from longstanding conservative and neoconservative policies and strategies. Pre-emptive war, unilateralism, a disregard for international treaties, contorted legal interpretations, and the manipulation of intelligence reports, have characterized not merely President Bush’s efforts, but more than a half century of conservative thinking and leadership.

more re the neconservadroid divide

2004-08-15T09:14:00.000-07:00

Fukuyama, throughout his article, argues with Krauthammmer over both the ideological substance of neoconservatism as well as the implementation of neoconservative vision. Fukuyama argues that legitimacy of American values and institutions is not automatic in the eyes of those around the world -- and a certain degree of realism requires us to acknowledge that since India thinks that a UN resolution is the only thing that can make a war legitimate, then we need to respect that reality if we want a nation like India's support. There were some in the room during the dinner who thought that Frank Fukuyama's remarks didn't really define true neoconservatism because he didn't acknowledge the universalism of American ideals and institutions and acknowledged that America's predominant power would breed rival balances of power in the future -- which these observers feel doesn't hang with pure neoconservatism.

I'm convinced that Fukuyama is a major stakeholder in neoconservative circles -- mostly because he thinks he is and makes a claim to some degree of ideological stewardship of this movement. But it's clear that Krauthammer and he disagree strongly on ideology and on its practice in Iraq. I have been informed by the editor of National Interest that Charles Krauthammer will have a counter-point article in the next issue of the journal.

...continues at The Washington Note

the neocon road to Najaf

2004-08-13T17:45:00.000-07:00

The road to Najaf began in the early months after it became fairly obvious that there was going to be a bit more to this than merely cakewalking into Baghdad and turning the economy over to Halliburton while democracy spread throughout the Middle East.

Actually, the road began with the sacking of our first occupation administrator, Lt. Gen. Jay Garner.

Garner’s offense was that he clashed with the cabal of Neoconservatives within the administration. There were probably several issues but we now know that two of the big ones had to do with elections and economics.

Specifically, Garner advocated early elections and opposed the Polish-style economic shock treatment of cramming down market capitalism too soon and without input of the Iraqi’s themselves. Yes, the Iraqis would make mistakes but they would own their country and much more important than immediately changing the economic system was providing employment even if by inefficient bureaucracies and state owned industries.

...continues at The Washington Dispatch

results of the neocon regime

2004-08-13T10:13:00.000-07:00

Kurt Vonnegut lists some of the worst:

In case you haven’t noticed, and as a result of a shamelessly rigged election in Florida, in which thousands of African Americans were arbitrarily disenfranchised, we now present ourselves to the rest of the world as proud, grinning, jut-jawed, pitiless war lovers, with appallingly powerful weaponry and unopposed.

In case you haven’t noticed, we are now almost as feared and hated all over the world as the Nazis were.

With good reason.

In case you haven’t noticed, our unelected leaders have dehumanized millions and millions of human beings simply because of their religion and race. We wound and kill ’em and torture ’em and imprison ’em all we want.

Piece of cake.

In case you haven’t noticed, we also dehumanize our own soldiers, not because of their religion or race, but because of their low social class.

Send ’em anywhere. Make ’em do anything.

Piece of cake.

today's headline that best illustrates the futility of neocon Iraq policy

2004-08-10T09:36:00.000-07:00

Helicopters Pound Najaf Cemetery

Iraq war tout stands to profit handsomely

2004-08-09T10:05:00.000-07:00

Steve Clemons' new blog, The Washington Note, details how, ex-CIA Director James Woolsey, reportedly first to proclaim a connection between Saddam Hussein and al Qaeda post-9/11, stands to reap war profits. Clemons is also using the blog's comment feature to engage readers in an ongoing dialogue -here's hoping he can keep that up and not drown in the flood of abusive spam that has led other bloggers to turn off the commenting feature.

neoconservadroids' Iraqi darling faces new charges

2004-08-09T09:09:00.000-07:00

The Los Angeles Times calls Ahmad Chalabi down but not out, still enjoying support among his American champions, and " to amass power and wealth in the new Iraq."

nearsighted neoconservadroid

2004-08-08T10:19:00.000-07:00

Talking Points Memo analyzes neoconservadroid strategist Douglas Feith's lame self-justification in yesterday's New York Times, calling it "one of the clearest pieces of evidence for the strategic myopia at the heart of the Bush administration's 'war on terror'."

Iraq fiasco turns belligerently-surnamed neoconservadroid against Team Bush

2004-08-07T11:22:00.000-07:00

Francis Fukuyama used to be part of the Washington gang that happily filled in the gaps in George Bush's intellectual world. Several of his fellow members - Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, Paul Wolfowitz - have played defining roles in the Bush presidency and will effectively meet their political fate with him in November.

Fukuyama, however, has departed from Team Bush over Iraq. Despite his ranking as one of the world's foremost public intellectuals and a leading neoconservative thinker, he will not be voting Republican this year and he thinks his old ally, Rumsfeld, should have resigned over Iraq.

"There seems to be this cultural thing that Americans don't resign, no matter what," he says. "But I think that people who are responsible for policy that hasn't gone well owe it to give a chance to somebody else. I just think they [the Bush Administration] ought to be held accountable for policy failure."

...read it all in the Sydney Morning Herald: Under friendly fire

it depends on what the meaning of is is

2004-08-06T18:52:00.000-07:00

To the degree that neoconservatism has any real meaning‚ ironically, it is now a discussion about its role in foreign policy, where it reflects the view of that wing of the Republican Party that is idealistic about the ability of American power to remake the world. In that sense the neocon influence is greatly exaggerated.

That's New Republic editor Peter Beinart fuzzing it up in an interview published today.

they never stop thinking about new ways to harm our country and our people

2004-08-06T09:57:00.000-07:00

"Our enemies are innovative and resourceful, and so are we. They never stop
thinking about new ways to harm our country and our people, and neither do
we."

-George W. Bush, 5 August 2004

will robots replace neoconservadroids?

2004-08-05T11:58:00.000-07:00

Robot guard will smoke out villains reports New Scientist. Neoconservadroids begin foaming at the mouth.

the mystery of the missing neoconservadroid

2004-08-05T10:34:00.000-07:00

With War Losing Support, Rumsfeld Stages a Retreat, in today's Los Angeles Times.

demystifying the neoconservadroids: a view from the right

2004-08-05T09:19:00.000-07:00

Powered by both Jewish and non-Jewish neoconservatives centered in the offices of Pentagon Chief Donald Rumsfeld and Vice President Dick Cheney and by White House deference to the solidly pro-Zionist Christian Right, the neoconservative worldview – dedicated to the security of Israel and the primacy of military power in a world of good and evil – emerged after 9/11 as the driving force in the foreign policy of current President George W Bush, as well as the dominant narrative in a cowed and complacent mass media.

...according to Halper and Clarke, "the neoconservative vision is one of fear cantered around (Thomas) Hobbes' doomsday vision of man in his primitive state" and "extreme pessimism" reflected in the political philosophy of Leo Strauss, whose thought exercised a strong influence on the neoconservative movement through its godfather Irving Kristol and assorted disciples, some of whom have risen to prominence within and around the Bush administration, particularly in the national-security arena.

Indeed, the authors join a number of other critics, particularly on the right, in rejecting the notion that neoconservatives can really be considered "conservative" at all. Not only are they reckless in favoring the use of military power, but their advocacy of "nation-building" or "transforming the Middle East" belies an arrogance that is entirely foreign to the core conservative conviction that free or democratic societies are the product of centuries of organic development, the basis for which can neither be imposed from outside nor built overnight.

Similarly, and consistent with their view of the world as a moral battleground, neoconservatives pay little attention to such notions as "stability" and "normalcy," or even, the "economic implications of their policies." This should be of particular concern to U.S. corporations, a traditional conservative political constituency, the authors argue, because the "U.S. business world – multi-polar, multilateral, cooperative, interdependent, consumer-driven and rule-based ... is as different from the neoconservative world as night from day."

...from: Attacking Neo-Cons From the Right by Jim Lobe, a review of America Alone: The Neo-Conservatives and the Global Order by Stefan Halper, a U.S. policy-maker under past Republican administrations who teaches at Cambridge, and Jonathan Clarke, a retired British diplomat currently based at the Cato Institute

"just do it, we can always lie about it later"

2004-08-04T19:36:00.000-07:00

David Sirota and Christy Harvey demonstrate definitvely that Bush and his neoconservadroid crew took us to war in Iraq knowing that they were lying about the reasons.

If desperation is ugly, then Washington, D.C. today is downright hideous.

As the 9/11 Commission recently reported, there was “no credible evidence” of a collaborative relationship between Iraq and al Qaeda. Similarly, no weapons of mass destruction have been found in Iraq. With U.S. casualties mounting in an election year, the White House is grasping at straws to avoid being held accountable for its dishonesty.

The whitewash already has started: In July, Republicans on the Senate Intelligence Committee released a controversial report blaming the CIA for the mess. The panel conveniently refuses to evaluate what the White House did with the information it was given or how the White House set up its own special team of Pentagon political appointees (called the Office of Special Plans) to circumvent well-established intelligence channels. And Vice President Dick Cheney continues to say without a shred of proof that there is “overwhelming evidence” justifying the administration’s pre-war charges.

But as author Flannery O’Conner noted, “Truth does not change according to our ability to stomach it.” That means no matter how much defensive spin spews from the White House, the Bush administration cannot escape the documented fact that it was clearly warned before the war that its rationale for invading Iraq was weak.

Top administration officials repeatedly ignored warnings that their assertions about Iraq’s supposed Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD) and connections to al Qaeda were overstated. In some cases, they were told their claims were wholly without merit, yet they went ahead and made them anyway. Even the Senate report admits that the White House “misrepresented” classified intelligence by eliminating references to contradictory assertions.

In short, they knew they were misleading America.

And they did not care.

Read it and weep.

neocon sofa samurais

2004-08-03T13:08:00.000-07:00

As for national security, one's stomach churns hearing President Bush, VP Dick Cheney, and neocon sofa samurais, many of whom dodged active military service during the Vietnam War, shamelessly accusing Kerry, who won three Purple Hearts in combat, of being soft on defence.

writes Eric Margolis in Bush like Custer

worth repeating how others see US

2004-08-03T09:06:00.000-07:00

In many parts of the Muslim world the war against global terrorism has come to be viewed as a war against Islam and Muslims. The image of America has become that of a neo-imperial power that has sought to redraw the map of the Middle East and the Muslim world, influenced by an unholy alliance of neoconservatives and the militant Christian right, in an attempt to implement a New American century.

...from: History lessons, in The New Nation, "Bangladesh's independent news source"

robot warriors never say die

2004-07-28T08:56:00.000-07:00

Neoconservative dead-enders regroup and start plotting their comeback, writes Matthew Yglesias at The American Prospect, concerning the relaunch of the Committee on the Present Danger (CPD), "an organization not heard from since the last days of disco."

Neoconservadroid puppet Bush seeks new war?

2004-07-25T10:33:00.000-07:00

Recognizing the belligerent Eveready Bunny looking for a way to boost his re-election chances and another war to boost profits for his war profiteer cronies, a Los Angeles Times op-ed essay explores the potential mischief lurking in President Bush's recent statement that although the CIA had found "no direct connection between Iran and the attacks of Sept. 11," nevertheless "we will continue to look and see if the Iranians were involved." .... Re Bush's playing the fear card, Frank Rich predicts, "Odds are that the next John Ashcroft doomsday press conference will be timed to coincide with the run-up to Mr. Kerry's acceptance speech on Thursday night."

Neocons help create the present danger, now fight it

2004-07-22T21:29:00.000-07:00

Neoconservadroids of all stripes reconstitute the Committee on the Present Danger, "dedicated to winning the global war on terrorism." Noble goal, but the CPD includes a lot of folks and organiations who bear responsibility for helping to create the global terrorist threat.

Fighting Fox

2004-07-21T16:19:00.000-07:00

MoveOn.org continues to hold Fox News' feet to the fire, petitioning Congress to investigate whether or not Fox's "fair and balanced" claim violates truth in advertising laws, and leading the struggle to expose Fox for its partisan propagandizing for the Iraq war and other neoconservadroid projects. In just a few hours earlier today, more than 200,000 people signed an online petition asking Congress to call Fox owner Rupert Murdock to testify before Congress about Fox's partisan political programming disseminated as "news". Join the struggle at http://www.moveon.org/fox/.

Change partners, keep dancing

2004-07-20T08:36:00.000-07:00

"Realists" urge restraint as new neoconservadroid target emerges: Iran.

How Feith made his "warped world" ours

2004-07-19T08:29:00.000-07:00

The story of neoconservadroid Iraq war architect Douglas Feith's shenanigans lies exposed in four current books, says the UPI

Oh, Condi, Condi

2004-07-18T21:43:00.000-07:00

"You be the flower and I'll be the bumblebee
Oh she loves me; oops, she loves me not
People say you're cold, but I think you're hot."

"They say you're too uptight, I say you're not
Dance around me spinnin' like a top
Oh, Condi, Condi, don't ever stop."

Chickenhawks waiting to pounce

2004-07-17T08:27:00.000-07:00

Will "hawkish" neoconseradroids co-opt the new generation of young conservadroids as William F. Buckley Jr. passes the torch? Will libertarians leave them in the dust? Those are the questions raised in Young Right Tries to Define Post-Buckley Future in today's New York Times.

Murdoch the Manipulator

2004-07-16T15:52:00.000-07:00

Center for American Progress profiles media mogul Rupert Murdoch, describing him as a media manipulator, war monger, oil imperialist, intimidator, far right partisan, Bush supporter, and neoconservadroid.

How Democrats helped the neoconservadroids win

2004-07-15T14:44:00.000-07:00

It's not all the neoconservadroids' fault. Ceding "class warfare" to the right, refashioning the Democrat party as pro-corporate: Thomas Frank explains why liberals have to share part of the blame of the US political and cultural shift to the right.

From Trotsky to Wolfowitz

2004-07-14T16:48:00.000-07:00

That's the arc of the cult's history, according to a column by Justin Raimondo today, worth reading if only for its overheated articulation of the in-fighting and fragmentation of already-splintered groups that leads to the current groupuscule of neoconservadroid power brokers pulling President Bush's puppet strings.

Paper positions Powell as anti-neoconservadroid

2004-07-13T07:25:00.000-07:00

He's thumbing his nose at them, according to a story in today's Christian Science Monitor that also warns it's too soon to say the robotic warmongers have lost the battle for control of US foreign policy.

Why neoconservdroids are here to stay

2004-07-13T00:35:00.000-07:00

"A former official in the Nixon, Ford and Reagan administrations and a former British diplomat argue that neo-conservatism is a manifestation of a deeper syndrome that has structural roots in United States history and politics." Their debate is worth reading, at openDemocracy.net

Michael Moore, closet neoconservadroid?

2004-07-12T07:30:00.000-07:00

Is Michael Moore acting in concert with neoconservadroid Richard Perle? Once past that absurd question and its fallacious answer, Tany Hsu's column at Antiwar.com is worth reading for its fevered expose of a secret neoconservadroid plan to invade Saudi Arabia, stretching back to the oil crisis of 1971.

Neoconservdroid coup at CIA?

2004-07-09T06:48:00.000-07:00

Yes, says Justin Raimondo, if neoconservadroid John Lehman takes departed George Tenet's place.

Neoconservadroids know no shame

2004-07-08T06:15:00.000-07:00

Mentioned almost in passing, in a Boston Globe book review: never-give-up, never-say-sorry neoconservadroid Paul Wolfowitz, "the neoconservative architect of the Iraq war who has most impressed specialists with his ignorance of the region."