Neo-cons jumping ship: speaking out on devasting dysfunction within the * administration

[LuckyLib]

Having interviewed major neocon players in the past few years, David Rose in January's Vanity Fair returns to check in with them. He says, "I expected to enounter disappointment. What I find instead is despair and fury at the incompetence of the Bush administration . . ."


http://www.vanityfair.com/politics/features/2007/01/neo...

For Kenneth Adelman, "the most dispiriting and awful moment of the whole administration was the day that Bush gave the Presidential Medal of Freedom to George Tenet, General Tommy Franks, and Jerry Bremer—three of the most incompetent people who've ever served in such key spots. And they get the highest civilian honor a president can bestow on anyone! That was the day I checked out of this administration. It was then I thought, There's no seriousness here. These are not serious people. If he had been serious, the president would have realized that those three are each directly responsible for the disaster of Iraq."

"Professor Eliot Cohen of Johns Hopkins University's School of Advanced International Studies, yet another Defense Policy Board member and longtime advocate of ousting Saddam Hussein, is even more pessimistic: "People sometimes ask me, 'If you knew then what you know now, would you still have been in favor of the war?' Usually they're thinking about the W.M.D. stuff. My response is that the thing I know now that I did not know then is just how incredibly incompetent we would be, which is the most sobering part of all this. I'm pretty grim. I think we're heading for a very dark world, because the long-term consequences of this are very large, not just for Iraq, not just for the region, but globally—for our reputation, for what the Iranians do, all kinds of stuff."

This is an amazingly revealing article. Clearly many of the architects believe the plan might have had a chance, had only * and Condi and the kids had the brains to pull it off. What's so depressing is what disgusting hubris and insane beliefs went into this whole mess.

[seemslikeadream]

1. Ken just ask yourself

WHY did georgie do that? WHY?

[calimary]

22. The comforting thing about him is that he will forever more be known as

kenneth "CAKEWALK" adelman. It was he who so smugly declared that this whole Iraq thing was gonna be "a cakewalk."

[EFerrari]

2. It's hard to believe how incredibly stupid these clever people are.

They still think their plan would work if only Junior had done it "right".

They still think their "disgusting hubris" and "insane beliefs" are RIGHT. :wow:

[ClassWarrior]

4. They're not stupid. They're defending their criminal enterprise.

When are folks going to realize this?

:hi: you...

NGU.

[EFerrari]

7. Hmm. You're right. They're not stupid, they're laying track.

Merry Christmas, my friend.

:hi:

[Morgana LaFey]

11. They're not stupid, they're SOCIOPATHS

All that intelligence goes into making everyone else in the world wrong but them; blaming others for their own faults and failures. Not having a conscience AT ALL, no matter what the subject. Learning to feign just enough human emotion to keep one's sociopathology under wraps.

They're monsters.

[Auntie Bush]

13. Might I be right in assuming

you speak from the heart and are down right hostile to the entire bush* administration?

Well said my friend and Merry Christmas!

[Morgana LaFey]

19. Thanks. You too

Do we have a Merry Christmas smilie? We should, huh?

[EFerrari]

15. Yup. That is how it works. Exactly. n/t

[calimary]

23. Yep. That is something we must NEVER forget. The ONLY problem

these bastards see with what's gone on is that it was HANDLED BADLY. It was the incompetence, stupid. It's not their plan or their policies or their overriding philosophy or their world conquest vision or anything of that sort that was totally fucked. It was merely the execution that was totally fucked. They still give themselves a pass. They miss the whole point.

That's why we have to keep our eyes on them, VERY CLOSELY and CONSTANTLY. They undoubtedly feel that their ideas were/are worthy and undeserving of being so wretchedly carried out. WHICH MEANS... they're going to be watching just as carefully and closely for the next opportunity to launch their schemes, assuming that THIS time they'll get it done properly. I suspect that one of their new imperatives is to find the next "leader" who'll carry their ball all the way to the end zone, and restart this nightmare all over again.

Remember "Mad-Eye Moody" from the Harry Potter books! A parable for our time. He was the grizzled, battle-scarred veteran wizard who taught the "Defense Against the Dark Arts" class one year. He repeatedly exhorted Harry and the rest of his students to remain on alert. He'd bellow "CONSTANT VIGILANCE!!!!" at them on a frequent basis. It's a MOST worthy lesson for us all. Because the neoCONS will not give up and go away. Heaven forbid they actually admit they were wrong, which they don't believe for a nanosecond. They have too much faith and too big an investment in their overriding policies and world-view. They WILL try it again if they get half a chance. BET ON IT.

[ClassWarrior]

3. They know damn well "the plan" had a snowball's chance in Kuwait.

This is the failure of the conservative philosophy itself.

http://www.rockridgeinstitute.org/research/lakoff/framingkatrina/view?searchterm=failure

NGU.

[John Q. Citizen]

20. Yes, It's the philosophy that was wrong, not the implementation of the philosophy.

[MichiganVote]

5. George Bush has screwed up everything he has ever touched

If they're so smart, they should have seen this coming. I did. Plenty of people did. So fuck em'. I have no use for people who have position, power and money and squander it on a jackass like George Bush.

[AtomicKitten]

6. and some neocons

haven't thrown in the towel quite yet and are pressuring Junior to double-down in Iraq. He must not be given the troops to do that.

[Frustratedlady]

8. Now I find this tremendously amazing...

Adelman said..."Not only did each of them, individually, have enormous flaws, but together they were deadly, dysfunctional."

Now, look at these guys. They knew the key players in the decision-making process of the Iraq War up close and personal. We, so-called radicals at DU and at other blogs, have never even met the key players, yet we came up with the exact same description of this dysfunctional administration a long time ago, and with no insider information, I might add.

Good heavens! They pick a leader with a resume that wouldn't turn a hamburger joint manager's head and then expect him to straighten out the Middle East? Where do these people come from?

I truly believe they all need some time on the couch!

[pretzel4gore]

9. treason....

the reason used to justify the invasion/occupation of iraq, a nation of 25 million people(?) with a tiny military budget compared to israel, or britain, or the state o california....even then, there was no proof so the busheviks lied to get what they wanted. This has seriously injured the USA-ultimately it could cost over a trillion dollars! The PNACers were the main driving force behind getting our society trapped in this mess. That's treason, plain and simple....even before one considers the enormity of the war crime. saddam was in effect an american agent!
World's Largest
Military Budgets:
($U.S. Billions)
United States 416.0
Russia* 65.0
China* 47.0
Japan 42.6
U.K. 38.4
France 29.5
Germany 24.9
Saudi Arabia 21.3
Italy 19.4
India 15.6
South Korea 14.1
Brazil* 10.7
Taiwan* 10.7
Israel 10.6
Spain 8.4
Australia 7.6
Canada 7.6
Netherlands 6.6
Turkey 5.8
Mexico 5.9
Kuwait* 3.9
Ukraine 5.0
Iran 4.8
Singapore 4.8
Sweden 4.5
Egypt* 4.4
Norway 3.8
Greece 3.5
Poland 3.5
Argentina* 3.3
U.A.E.* 3.1
Colombia* 2.9
Belgium 2.7
Pakistan* 2.6
Denmark 2.4
Vietnam 2.4
North Korea 2.1
Czech Republic 1.6
Iraq 1.4
Philippines 1.4
Portugal 1.3
Libya 1.2
Hungary 1.1
Syria 1.0
Cuba 0.8
Sudan 0.6
Yugoslavia 0.7
Luxembourg 0.2
Source: www.cdi.org.
(these stats are pre invasion, but still indicate iraq was never a threat to anyone outside a few neighbors. how these bald faced liars can be treated serious when the numbers say iraq was less military threat to USA then canada is, or belgium, i do not know. alice in wonderland is less a stretch then this rightwing bs...especially when you recall that the busheviks try to force canada/mexico etc to increase the military spending!)

[fuzzyball]

18. WOW....US spends more on military than the rest of the world combined!!

Any wonder why we are the so called sole remaining
superpower!!

[gratuitous]

10. Well, as long as the PNAC isn't to blame

If only the administration had clustered more and fucked harder, this whole clusterfuck would have never happened.

[Morgana LaFey]

12. Well said nt

[gulliver]

14. "I think we're heading for a very dark world"

I worry about this too. The "war president" and his fellow geniuses have created a catastrophe. It's funny (funny strange) hearing Bush talk about the catastrophic consequences of failure in Iraq. First, whose failure is it? Second, he didn't tell us he was getting us into something with potentially catastrophic consequences back in 2003. We went to Dr. Bush to have our appendix removed on his advice. Maybe he left us with septicemia. Maybe he took out our liver.

People call it the worst strategic mistake in U.S. history. But that could just be a waypoint on the way the worst mistake in human history. The incompetence of it is exacerbated by Bush's own damaged instincts. It's pretty "pessimal."

Let's see if the Dems can pull us out of this dive though.

[calimary]

24. Damn! Let's just be grateful for small favors. At least junior never went to

medical school...

[Az_lefty]

16. professing themselves to be wise, they became fools.

Romans 1:22

[opihimoimoi]

21. Yup, they thought they were Fooling in order to Rule,,,,as it turns out all

they got were persistant fumbling .....and no touchdowns either....

Its been all losses with the Bushies...all the way down to 11% backing his Iraqi Plans...or was that a trial baloon?

The NeoCons have helped to fuck this Nation for supporting Bush 2X...and now they wanna bail??
No Way...they EAT IT as the cause of our probs...THEY INSTALLED BUSH....THEY GOT BLOOD ON THEIR HANDS...

[tinfoilinfor2005]

17. Amazing read.

But since they're all convinced that this dark world was caused by total incompetents (as they now admit), why aren't they calling for real crisis management? I didn't hear anyone suggesting an intervention from a unified congress, or a butt whipping from the Supreme Court, or an impeachment of any and all persons who led us to this disaster. All I heard was the sound of running water over dirty hands.