Neo-Cons Move to Preempt Baker Report (Jim Lobe)

[laststeamtrain]

Neo-Cons Move to Preempt Baker Report
Analysis by Jim Lobe

WASHINGTON, Dec 5 (IPS) - To have read the neo-conservative press here over the past month, one would think that former Secretary of State James Baker poses the biggest threat to the United States and Israel since Saddam Hussein.

<snip>

Things got even more personal with columns by Frank Gaffney, president of the neo-conservative Centre for Security Policy, and Mark Steyn in the Washington Times suggesting that Baker's thinking was motivated as much by anti-Semitism as by realism.

"Jim Baker's hostility towards the Jews is a matter of record and has endeared him to Israel's foes in the region," wrote Gaffney, suggesting that the ISG -- which, in another column published Tuesday, he called the "Iraq Surrender Group" -- would recommend a regional approach similar to Madrid that would "throw free Iraq to the wolves" and "allow the Mideast's only bona fide democracy, the Jewish State, to be snuffed in due course."

<snip>

For sheer consistency, however, the Weekly Standard, which in this week's edition featured no less than three articles denouncing the ISG -- including one that described the Commission's membership as "deeply reactionary" and the "K-Mart version of the Congress of Vienna -- has led the field.

In successive lead editorials by chief editor William Kristol and Robert Kagan, the magazine first assailed the notion that Washington should engage Syria and Iran as "capitulation," and then, reassured by Bush's declaration last week that he was not prepared to follow the ISG's advice on talking with either Damascus or Tehran, accused Baker of having "quite deliberately created... the disastrous impression... that the United States is about to withdraw from Iraq."

"At home and broad, people have been led to believe that Jim Baker and not the president was going to call the shots in Iraq from now on. Happily, that is not the case," according to Kagan and Kristol, who recently called Bush "the last neocon in power".

<more>

http://ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=35731

[Fridays Child]

1. Not all Americans know the terms "neo-con" or "PNAC" but most of us...

...do know that we're fed up with their opinions.

[classysassy]

6. Those cowardly bastards

why don't they take up arms and fight their own battles?could it be that all of them are cowards?.No heavy lifting for them unless its$$$$$$$$,let the poor die for their greed.Shame on all of them.

[KoKo]

2. The Funders and Enablers of the Neo-Cons (RW Think Tanks and MS Thinktanks)

are the ones who should be blamed, also. Who are these powers that they have even more power than James Baker III and the Bushies? They did well in co-opting Bush II.....exploiting his bad relationship with his father.

Until the funding dries up for the NeoCon Ideology, we are stuck with them forever. They have recruits that keep coming. :-(

[groovedaddy]

3. This is the New World Order v. the Neo-Cons

As long as their is a continued U.S. military presence in Iraq, the neo-cons are basically getting what they want.
I have a feeling that if Baker, et al. are ignored and the beat goes on, impeachment will quickly become the cause de jour.

[applegrove]

4. Oh! Are those neocon people still kicking around? I didn't know.

[laststeamtrain]

5. Links to the columns & articles:

http://washingtontimes.com/commentary/fgaffney.htm

http://www.weeklystandard.com/

The neo-con ideology is not going away. The lobbies they work through are too generous for our elected officials & others to ignore.

Big oil & greater Israel are spatting at the moment but they'll find new alignments...