An insightful article by Alexander Cockburn, now appearing in CounterPunch (www.counterpunch.org), discusses the PNAC neocons, and their reach, even into the Democratic Party. Definitely worth a read.
In the end, Cockburn reaches the same conclusions I have; we must
completely rid our government of neocon influence. It is destroying this nation, has ruined our foreign policy, has created a world full of enemies for us, emptied our treasury, embroiled us in wars, .... and has infected both political parties to such a degree, it is sometimes hard to tell them apart. Additionally, through associations with groups like AIPAC, the neocons also have an incredible effect on our media as well, as there are many PNAC/AIPAC/Likud supporters among the media elite and ownership.
It is a boil that needs lancing, and quickly.
Excerpts from Cockburn's article:
<snip>
Now here we are on the downslope of 2003 and George Bush is learning, way too late for his own good, that the neo-cons have been matchlessly wrong about everything. One can burrow through the archives of historical folly in search of comparisons and still come up empty-handed. The neo-cons told Bush that eviction of Saddam would rearrange the chairs in the Middle East, to America's advantage. Wrong. They told him it would unlock the door to a peaceful settlement in Israel.Wrong. They told him (I'm talking about Wolfowitz's team of mad Straussians at DoD) that there was irrefutable proof of the existence of weapons of mass destruction inside Iraq. Wrong. They told him the prime Iraqi exile group, headed by Ahmad Chalabi, had street cred in Iraq. Wrong. They told him it would be easy to install a US regime in Baghdad and make the place hum quietly along, like Lebanon in the 1950s. Wrong.
And of course the neo-cons, who have never forgiven the UN for Resolutions 242 and 338,(bad for Israel) told Bush that he should tell the UN to take its charter and shove it. Bush, who appreciates simple words and simple thoughts, took their advice, and last Sunday night had it served up to him by his speechwriters as crow, which he methodically ate in his 18-minute speech, saying the UN has an important role in Iraq.
Now many are gloating at the neo-cons' discomfiture and waiting for their downfall. Click go Madam Defarge's knitting needles as she waits beside the guillotine. Here come the tumbrils, inching their way slowly through the rotting cabbages and vulgar ribaldry of Republican isolationists. Here's a pale-faced Douglas Feith. Up goes the fatal blade, and down it flashes. Behold, the head of a neo-con! The next tumbril carries a weightier cargo: Richard Perle and Elliott Abrams. Still not enough. Madam Defarge knits on and her patience is soon rewarded. Here come Wolfowitz and Rumsfeld, the latter defiantly jotting a coda to Rumsfeld's Rules. They are cleanly dispatched and the crowd moves off to torch the Weekly Standard and string up its editor, Bill Kristol.
Maybe not all of them, but some neo-con will surely pay the price for dropping President Bush's approval rating into the low 50s. But will the basic neo-con political line, dominant for so long in Washington, suffer a dent? Not in any fundamental way. To appreciate this one only has to look at the current posture of prominent Democrats. Are they glorying in Bush's political embarrassment and the humiliating and costly disaster for the US consequent upon its attack on Iraq? Take US Senator Joe Biden. His immediate reaction to Bush's speech last Sunday was to insist that the President would need, and should get, more money than the $87 billion requested by the White House. <snip>
Much more:
http://www.counterpunch.org/cockburn09172003.html 
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