Mr and Mrs Neocon

One of the things that has always distinguished these wingnut intellectuals is that they are always wrong about everything.

The above is from a must read post by Digby, Mr And Mrs Nut, where she discusses the PNAC neocons in general and the criminally insane Cheney family specifically. Give it a read.

Insanity Recognized?

I still think Henry Kissinger is a war criminal and I'm not a big fan of Brent Scowcroft or even Zbigniew Brzezinski but I am encouraged at least a little when they seem to condemn the brute force and ignorance - bull in the china shop ideology of PNAC and the neocons. According to David Ignatius that's exactly what all three have done.
Wise Advice: Listen, and Engage

When foreign policy gurus Henry Kissinger, Zbigniew Brzezinski and Brent Scowcroft all start saying the same thing, it's time to pay attention. That happened this month in a joint appearance broadcast on " The Charlie Rose Show," and their comments ought to be required reading for presidential candidates in both parties -- not to mention the current occupant of the Oval Office.

Their collective message was this: In a radically changing world, America needs to be less arrogant about its use of power and more willing to talk to other nations. That may sound obvious, but the United States has spent much of the past six years doing the opposite. The three former top officials argued for more dialogue not just to improve America's image but so that we can understand the new rules and opportunities in the game of nations.

"The United States has spent much of the past six years doing the opposite" because madmen like Dick Cheney, Joe Lieberman and Bill Kristol have been calling the shots. Even war criminals see the insanity of it.

"The international system is in a period of change like we haven't seen for several hundred years" because of the declining power of nation-states, said Kissinger, who was secretary of state under Presidents Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford. "We are used to dealing with problems that have a solution," but Americans have to realize that "we're at the beginning of a long period of adjustment."

All three of them agreed that we should be doing something the neocons look upon with scorn - talk and listen.

So it's noteworthy that the three offer similar prescriptions for what to do, post-Iraq. They all argue that this is a time when America needs to be out in the world -- talking, yes, but even more, listening. And their advice to the next president is almost identical.

Scowcroft urged America's next leader to declare, "I think that we are a part of the world, that we want to cooperate with the world. We are not the dominant power in the world, that everyone falls in behind us." Brzezinski offered a similar formulation: "The next president should say to the world that the United States wants to be part of the solution to its problems" and that it will be "engaged in the quest to get people in the world the dignities that they seek today." Even the sometimes brusque Kissinger agreed that the next president should express a willingness "to listen to a lot of other countries about what they think should be done. He should not pretend that he has all the answers."

All three want to see America talking not just with friends but also with potential adversaries. With Iran, where Kissinger said "we should at least attempt to have a quiet negotiation with a high-level Iranian to determine where we're trying to go." With Russia, where Brzezinski advised "we shouldn't overdramatize the current disagreements." With the Chinese, who, Scowcroft insisted, "need a stable world," too.

Now I don't think that conservatism is dead but I see a ray of hope that the madness of the neocons will now be euthanized. I only hope it will happen before it's too late.

Impeach Cheney Now!

David Broder - Rapist?

I found this blog post via memeorandum under 5 Myths About Scooter and the Slammer. The blog, Mercury Rising is one I don't think I've seen before and the post, David Broder Is A Rapist is a classic.

Is he? Literally? Probably not.

But he has the moral vacuity, and the cognitive dissonance, of a serial rapist. Just examine his latest piece of amoral tripe, ”Judge Walton’s Lesson“.

The money quote from Broder:

This whole controversy is a sideshow — engineered partly by the publicity-seeking former ambassador Joseph Wilson and his wife and heightened by the hunger in parts of Washington to “get” Rove for something or other.

Like other special prosecutors before him, Fitzgerald got caught up in the excitement of the case and pursued Libby relentlessly, well beyond the time that was reasonable.

Ladies and gentlemen, I ask you:

What sort of amorality does it take to ignore the fact that:

1) Dick Cheney outed Valerie Plame in a fit of pique over her husband’s column “What I Didn’t Find In Niger”, and:

2) Outing Valerie Plame not only destroyed her career, but obliterated the far-flung network of Middle Eastern and Iraqi field operatives and contacts she had spent years - decades - nurturing? And does anyone think that the field operatives in Iraq, once Cheney made sure the whole world knew that Valerie Plame was an undercover CIA agent, escaped the notice of the local Sunni insurgents?

You are on the money Phoenix Woman. Good Job.

The Lunatic's "War on Terror"

The Cheney administration is not incompetent; on the world stage things are going just as they planned. With this in mind let's look at a couple of pieces appearing in the MSM this week. The first is this commentary by David Ignatius,
Going Nowhere Fast

We are in the ditch in the Middle East. As bad as you think it is watching TV, it's worse. It's not just Iraq but the whole pattern of America's dealings with the Arab world. People aren't just angry at America -- they've been that way to varying degrees since I first came here 27 years ago. What's worse is that they're giving up on us -- on our ability to make good decisions, to solve problems, to play the role of honest broker.

Let's start with some poll numbers presented at the Doha conference by Shibley Telhami, a University of Maryland professor and a fellow of the Saban Center at the Brookings Institution, which co-sponsored the conference with the Qatari foreign ministry. The polling was done last year by Zogby International in six countries that are usually regarded as pro-American: Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon, Morocco, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates.

In these six "friendly" countries, only 12 percent of those surveyed expressed favorable attitudes toward the United States. America's leaders have surpassed Israel's as objects of anger. Asked which foreign leader they disliked most, 38 percent named George Bush; Ariel Sharon was a distant second at 11 percent; and Ehud Olmert was third with 7 percent.

The poll data show a deep suspicion of American motives: 65 percent of those surveyed said they didn't think democracy was a real U.S. objective in the Middle East. Asked to name two countries that had the most freedom and democracy, only 14 percent said America, putting it far behind France and Germany. And remember, folks, this is coming from our friends.

So the US is universally hated in the mid east. That's OK with Cheney exactly what he wants. Cheney doesn't want to be liked - only feared. The second piece is by Christiane Amanpour,
Iranian official offers glimpse from within: A desire for U.S. ally

TEHRAN, Iran (CNN) -- As I sat down recently with a senior Iranian government official, he urgently waved a column by Thomas Friedman of The New York Times in my face, one about how the United States and Iran need to engage each other.

''Natural allies,'' this official said.

It was a surprising choice of words considering the barbs Washington and Tehran have been trading of late.

"We are not after conflict. We are not after crisis. We are not after war," said this official, who spoke on condition of anonymity. "But we don't know whether the same is true in the U.S. or not. If the same is true on the U.S. side, the first step must be to end this vicious cycle that can lead to dangerous action -- war."

Yes natural allies in the real war on terror. The terror threat doesn't come from the Shiites in Iran, or Iraq. The roots of al Qaeda and the Taliban is the extremist Sunni Wahhabi sect out of Saudi Arabia, enemies of the Shiite Iranians for 1400 years. Now the PNAC neocons, including Dick Cheney, have had Iran as a target since their own tyrant, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, was overthrown in 1979. They controlled the Shah and so they controlled the resources of the country. Indirect imperialism. Now an attack on Iran will further destabilize the region leading to more war and less security. Cheney and his fellow lunatics are fully aware of this and it's just what they want. Dick Cheney is a classic megalomaniac - a man who wants above all else to be a tyrant. Like all tyrants Cheney and the rest of the PNAC crowd realize that one of the best ways to consolidate power is war - a constant state of war against real or concocted external enemies. No Dick Cheney is not incompetent. Instability in the middle east and the wars it will bring are exactly what he wants. That's why they will attack Iran. It's not about oil but power except for the power that comes from controlling the oil.

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