Neo-cons try to rally, bully Republicans

[Barrett808]

Source: Inter Press Service

Neo-cons try to rally, bully Republicans
By Jim Lobe

WASHINGTON - In the face of a critical Senate debate on future US strategy in Iraq, neo-conservatives and other hawks are trying to rally increasingly skeptical - and worried - Republicans behind continued support for President George W Bush's five-month-old "surge" strategy.

They are arguing that the "surge" - the deployment of an additional 30,000 US troops to try to pacify Baghdad to encourage political compromise among the major groups in Iraq - has not been given sufficient time to work and that abandoning it now would amount to snatching defeat from the jaws of victory.

But the recent defection of several hitherto loyal, if privately critical, senior Republican senators has thrown the hawks - both inside and outside the administration - into something of a panic, if only because anti-war Democrats appear to be inching steadily toward the kind of majority that Bush can no longer simply ignore.

...

"They are pre-9/11 Republicans," wrote William Kristol, the editor of the Weekly Standard, about Senators Richard Lugar, George Voinovich, Pete Dominici and John Warner, the four most senior Republicans who have called for a change of course in Iraq over the past week. "They have been followers of conventional opinion (during their 20-plus-year Senate careers), not leaders," he went on. "Now they are following conventional wisdom again, in their stately way, in turning against the Iraq war."

And the lead editorial in Monday's Wall Street Journal argued: "Republicans may think they can distance themselves from all this, but they'll get no credit from voters if they contribute to an ugly outcome in Iraq. A divided Republican caucus that undercuts America's military efforts while chasing the mirage of bipartisan comity will only make their own election defeat (in November 2008) more likely."

Read more: http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/IG11Ak01.html

[C_U_L8R]

1. Who's afraid of Machiavelli?

Kristol is such a friggin fool.

[JHB]

2. "Pre-9/11"?

Damn that Schoolhouse Rock! Made me grow up thinking "3" was the magic number!
:crazy:

[whistle]

3. The neocons seem to have picked Giuliani as their candidate for 2008

[msongs]

4. wall street journal makes profits off the dead corpses of US military people and Iraqis nt

[truthisfreedom]

5. If bushco MIHOPed or LIHOPed 9-11-2001, then the pre-9-11 mindset is the correct one.

If they allowed it to happen, or assisted it in happening, they created 9-11 for their own purposes and it's all a lie.

So anyone talking that way is complicit in the conspiracy.

[damntexdem]

7. It doesn't take LIHOP or MIHOP. Dubya was at least asleep at the switch in the lead up to 9/11.

The correct mindset is not just pre-9/11, it's pre-1/20/00. The Bushistas left the U.S. open to attack, and it still is. They are all complicit in the idiocy.

[damntexdem]

6. Ooh, how awful: following conventional wisdom rather than neocon fantasy.

As more Republicans try to figure out and follow conventional wisdom, the neocons are panicking for good reason. But they'll still have some time to panic: wisdom, even the conventional variety, doesn't come easy to GOP Senators. ;-)

[MasonJar]

8. Why does one get the distinct feeling that if these GOPers were not

running for office in '08 then they would continue to abandon the troops and the Iraqis?

[David__77]

9. I agree that this hurts Republicans.

They'd do better either en masse abandoning the war or maintaining a rigid unity in supporting this aggression. But this scenario only weakens both anti- and pro-war Republicans. I have no complaint. I'd like to see Smith, Snowe, Collins, Voinovich, Warner, and others replaced by Democrats of the progressive type.

[applegrove]

10. Quelle Shock! Neocons manipulate and bully. Like their hero and a thing

they try and emulate - all the despots the world have ever known.