the neocons as "so untethered from reality as to defy caricature."

Neonuts: "Neonuts"

For them, Afghanistan and Iraq will not suffice. They want to take out Syria and Iran, and speed full steam ahead towards World Wars III and IV. The Weekly Standard asks simply, "Why wait?"

According to Newt Gingrich, there is no need to wait at all. On Meet the Press this past Sunday he offered that the Israel-Hezbollah conflict "… is, in fact, World War III" and "the U.S. ought to be helping...."

And how might the US help fight Newt's World War? The Weekly Standard provides the answer: "It would be easier to act sooner rather than later. Yes, there would be repercussions – and they would be healthy ones, showing a strong America that has rejected further appeasement."

George Will – not exactly your run-of-the-mill, card-carrying liberal – describes the neocons as "so untethered from reality as to defy caricature." ...

THE ARCHITECTS OF WAR: WHERE ARE THEY NOW?

Think Progress � THE ARCHITECTS OF WAR: WHERE ARE THEY NOW?: "...

President Bush has not fired any of the architects of the Iraq war. In fact, a review of the key planners of the conflict reveals that they have been rewarded – not blamed – for their incompetence."
...
Bush promoted Wolfowitz to head the World Bank in March 2005. [Washington Post, 3/17/05]

Key Quote: “We are dealing with a country that can really finance its own reconstruction and relatively soon.” [Wolfowitz, 3/27/03]
...
Feith voluntarily resigned from the Defense Department shortly after Bush’s reelection. He is co-chairman of a project at Harvard University’s John F. Kennedy School of Government to write an academic book on how to fight terrorism. Feith’s secretive groups at the Pentagon are under investigation by the Pentagon and the Senate Intelligence Committee for intelligence failures. [Washington Post, 1/27/05, 11/18/05; Washington Times, 3/3/06]

Key Quote: “I am not asserting to you that I know that the answer is — we did it right. What I am saying is it’s an extremely complex judgment to know whether the course that we chose with its pros and cons was more sensible.” [Washington Post, 7/13/05]
...
On January 26, 2005, Stephen Hadley was promoted to National Security Advisor. [White House bio]

Key Quote: “I should have recalled at the time of the State of the Union speech that there was controversy associated with the uranium issue. … And it is now clear to me that I failed in that responsibility in connection with the inclusion of these 16 words in the speech that he gave on the 28th of January.” [Hadley, 7/22/03]
...
Perle is a resident fellow at the American Enterprise Institute where he specializes in national security and defense issues. He has been investigated for ethical violations concerning war profiteering and other conflicts of interest. [Washington Post, 9/1/04]

Key Quote: “And a year from now, I’ll be very surprised if there is not some grand square in Baghdad that is named after President Bush. There is no doubt that, with the exception of a very small number of people close to a vicious regime, the people of Iraq have been liberated and they understand that they’ve been liberated. And it is getting easier every day for Iraqis to express that sense of liberation.” [Perle, 9/22/03]
...
Abrams was promoted to deputy national security adviser in February of 2005. [Slate, 2/17/05]

Key Quote: “We recognize that military action in Iraq, if necessary, will have adverse humanitarian consequences. We have been planning over the last several months, across all relevant agencies, to limit any such consequences and provide relief quickly.” [CNN, 2/25/03]
...
Wurmser was promoted to Principal Deputy Assistant to the Vice President for National Security Affairs; he is in charge of coordinating Middle East strategy. His name has been associated with the Plame Affair and with an FBI investigation into the passing of classified information to Chalabi and AIPAC. [Raw Story, 10/19/05; Washington Post, 9/4/04]

Key Quote: “Syria, Iran, Iraq, the PLO and Sudan are playing a skillful game, but have consistently worked to undermine US interests and influence in the region for years, and certainly will continue to do so now, even if they momentarily, out of fear, seem more forthcoming.” [Washington Post, 9/24/01]
...
Natsios stepped down as the head of USAID in January and is currently teaching at Georgetown University’s Edmund A. Walsh’s School of Foreign Service as a Distinguished Professor in the Practice of Diplomacy and Advisor on International Development. [AP, 2/20/06; Georgetown, 12/2/05]

Key Quote: “[T]he American part of this will be $1.7 billion. We have no plans for any further-on funding for this.” [Nightline, 4/23/03]
...
Bartlett was promoted to Counselor to the President on January 5, 2005, and is responsible for the formulation of policy and implementation of the President’s agenda. [White House]

Key Quote: “President Bush understands that the need to disarm Saddam Hussein is necessary. He has made that case to the United Nations Security Council. He’s made that case to the United States Congress. The entire world rallied behind this resolution that gives him one last chance. He has that chance, but time is running out.” [CNN, 1/26/03]
...
In 2004, Daniels was elected Governor of Indiana. [USA Today, 11/3/04]

Key Quote: Mitch Daniels had said the war would be an “affordable endeavor” and rejected an estimate by the chief White House economic adviser that the war would cost between $100 billion and $200 billion as “very, very high.” [Christian Science Monitor, 1/10/06]
...
Tenet voluntarily resigned from the administration on June 3, 2004. He was later awarded a Presidential Medal of Freedom. [Washington Post, 6/3/04]

Key Quote: “It’s a slam dunk case.” [CNN, 4/19/04 ...

These are the right-wing intellectuals who demanded George Bush invade Iraq. Now they admit they got it wrong. Are you listening, Mr President?

Independent Online Edition > Americas: "9 March 2006 07:06 | NeoCon allies desert Bush over Iraq

These are the right-wing intellectuals who demanded George Bush invade Iraq. Now they admit they got it wrong. Are you listening, Mr President?
Published: 09 March 2006

William Buckley Jnr

INFLUENTIAL CONSERVATIVE COLUMNIST AND TV PUNDIT

'One can't doubt the objective in Iraq has failed ... Iraqi animosities have proved uncontainable by an army of 130,000 Americans. Different plans have to be made. And the kernel here is the acknowledgement of defeat.'

Francis Fukuyama

AUTHOR AND LONG-TERM ADVOCATE OF TOPPLING SADDAM

'By invading Iraq, the Bush administration created a self-fulfilling prophecy: Iraq has now replaced Afghanistan as a magnet, a training ground and an operational base for jihadists, with plenty of American targets to shoot at.'

Richard Perle

ARCH-WARMONGER AND PIVOTAL REPUBLICAN HAWK

'The military campaign and its political aftermath were both passionately debated within the Bush administration. It got the war right and the aftermath wrong We should have understood that we needed Iraqi partners.'

Andrew Sullivan

PROMINENT COMMENTATOR AND INFLUENTIAL BLOGGER

'The world has learnt a tough lesson, and it has been a lot tougher for those tens of thousands of dead, innocent Iraqis ... than for a few humiliated pundits. The correct response is not more spin but a sense of shame and sorrow.'

George Will

RIGHT-WING COLUMNIST ON 'THE WASHINGTON POST' AND TV PUNDIT

'Almost three years after the invasion, it is still not certain whether, or in what sense, Iraq is a nation. And after two elections and a referendum on the constitution, Iraq barely has a government.'

William Buckley Jnr

INFLUENTIAL CONSERVATIVE COLUMNIST AND TV PUNDIT

'One can't doubt the objective in Iraq has failed ... Iraqi animosities have proved uncontainable by an army of 130,000 Americans. Different plans have to be made. And the kernel here is the acknowledgement of defeat.'

Francis Fukuyama

AUTHOR AND LONG-TERM ADVOCATE OF TOPPLING SADDAM

'By invading Iraq, the Bush administration created a self-fulfilling prophecy: Iraq has now replaced Afghanistan as a magnet, a training ground and an operational base for jihadists, with plenty of American targets to shoot at.'

Richard Perle

ARCH-WARMONGER AND PIVOTAL REPUBLICAN HAWK

'The military campaign and its political aftermath were both passionately debated within the Bush administration. It got the war right and the aftermath wrong We should have understood that we needed Iraqi partners.'

Andrew Sullivan

PROMINENT COMMENTATOR AND INFLUENTIAL BLOGGER

'The world has learnt a tough lesson, and it has been a lot tougher for those tens of thousands of dead, innocent Iraqis ... than for a few humiliated pundits. The correct response is not more spin but a sense of shame and sorrow.'

George Will

RIGHT-WING COLUMNIST ON 'THE WASHINGTON POST' AND TV PUNDIT

'Almost three years after the invasion, it is still not certain whether, or in what sense, Iraq is a nation. And after two elections and a referendum on the constitution, Iraq barely has a government.'" ...

The Cartoons and the Neocon

The Cartoons and the Neocon: "The Cartoons and the Neocon | Daniel Pipes and the Danish Editor | By JOHN SUGG

02/14/06 'Counterpunch' -- -- Let me tell you a few things about blasphemy. Been there, done it. Got expelled from high school for it. "
...
I have to admit a severe conflict of principles here. On the one hand, I want to shout: “I am Danish! Cartoons don’t kill, bombs do!” I don’t countenance any prior restraint on freedom of expression, and when I first read of the Muslim outrage over cartoons -- such as one depicting Mohammed’s turban as a bomb -- I sighed a deep sigh of regret. There’s no dialogue in burning embassies.
...
There are other caveats that need to be stated: The Muslim world has been under assault from western, Christian crusaders for a thousand years. We’ve colonized and despoiled their lands. Many in America regard their oil as rightfully ours -- an underlying if not complete explanation for George Bush’s war of conquest. We’ve carved up the Middle East, overthrown democracies (pre-Shah Iran, for example), and fostered despots to suit the West’s imperial whims. And we wonder why THEY don’t like us, and why THEY take insults from us so seriously.

So, let’s look at the guy who started this whole cartoon escapade. He’s Flemming Rose, the cultural editor of the Danish newspaper. In all of the Lexis-Nexis database of stories from the American media on the Mohammed cartoons, there is absolutely no mention of the fact that Rose is a close confederate of arch-Islamophobe Daniel Pipes. Indeed, there is almost no context at all about Rose’s newspaper. On a brief mention in the Washington Post gave a hint at a fact desperately needed to understand the situation. The Post described the affair as “a calculated insult … by a right-wing newspaper in a country where bigotry toward the minority Muslim population is a major, if frequently unacknowledged, problem.”

How bad is Pipes? He wants the utter military obliteration of the Palestinians; indeed, from the Muslim world, his racism is about as blatant as that of the Holocaust denying Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Pipes’ frequent outbursts of racism -- designed to toss gasoline on the neo-cons’ lust for a wholesale conflict of cultures -- earned him a Bush nomination to the U.S. Institute of Peace, a congressionally funded think tank. Rose came to America to commune with Pipes in 2004, and it was after that meeting the cartoon gambit materialized.

It’s also worth noting that Danish Prime Minister Anders Fogh Rasmussen wrapped himself in protestations about freedom of speech, and that’s commendable. But he is one of Bush’s few fans in Europe, steeped in the we-versus-them rhetoric, and having sent troops to the Iraqi Crusade.

Is Rose an equal opportunity offender? No way. As the British press reported last week, his newspaper refused in 2003 to run cartoons that ridiculed Jesus. And, of course, free expression in Europe is very relative. Many of the democracies have laws banning certain speech.

Rose gave a rather misanthropic rejoinder to AP when asked about whether he would have published the cartoons in light of the subsequent protests. Rose said: "I do not regret having commissioned those cartoons and I think asking me that question is like asking a rape victim if she regrets wearing a short skirt Friday night at the discotheque."

That, of course, makes the assumption that women are responsible for being raped. It’s just as fallacious as assuming the Muslim world should passively accept an intentional provocation, one that gratuitously attacked one of the religion’s strictest prohibitions. ...

The Truth About George W. Bush

The Truth About George W. Bush: "The George W. Bush Administration: | A Lesson for Bush Supporters | Editor, TvNewsLIES.org – February 2006

The facts and allegations contained in this article are not disputed, are easily verified and are documented by the subjects in their own words. ...

Group 1: The Neocons – The Policy Makers of the Administration

We have heard the term “Neocon” for the past five years. We have been told time and time again that the bulk of key policy makers in the Bush administration are Neo-Conservatives yet we never hear much about what Neocons believe in nor do we hear anything about their principles.

...

The godfather of the Neocon movement was an intellectual disciple of Machiavelli named Leo Strauss. Straus was a German Zionist who immigrated to the US in the 1930s and mentored people like William Kristol and Paul Wolfowitz while advocating his philosophy of a dog-eat-dog world.

In essence, the Straussian philosophy and teachings are now known as Neo-Conservatism. Below are some of the more interesting and perhaps surprising or even disturbing aspects of Neo-Conservatism as taught by Strauss:

• Nations cannot consider collective action and multilateralism unless it is 100 percent in line with their own selfish interests
• Strong leadership is required
• Military power is essential
• Leadership ought not be encumbered by human rights discourse or a moral conscience but nonetheless must "appear" to advocate such ideas.
• Rulers need not observe the laws they impose on the ruled.
• A ruler can cheat and lie and do all sorts of things but should at all time maintain the outside appearance of adherence to human rights and caring for people.
• Leaders can use religion as one of many tools to ensure the nation keeps on course as formulated.
• Outside threats help ensure social cohesion under domestic leadership
• Altruism, environmental protection, justice etc, are not the concern of governments and ruling elites. They have no part to play in the equation of power
• Strauss questioned how, and to what extent, freedom and excellence can coexist.
• Strauss was very pre-occupied with secrecy because he was convinced that the truth is too harsh for any society to bear; and that the truth-bearers are likely to be persecuted by society, especially a liberal society because liberal democracy is about as far as one can get from the truth as Strauss understood it.
• Secular society is the worst possible thing, because it leads to individualism, liberalism, and relativism, precisely those traits that may promote dissent that in turn could dangerously weaken society's ability to cope with external threats
• Nazism was a nihilistic reaction to the ungodly and liberal nature of the Weimar Republic.
• Religion should impose moral law on the masses who would otherwise be out of control.

Machiavelli’s political doctrine serves as the foundation of Neo-Conservatism and it denies the relevance of morality in political affairs. It states that that craft and deceit are justified in pursuing and maintaining political power. It implies that when it comes to achieving or maintaining power the end justifies the means. This is essentially the core of Machiavellianism and serves as the foundation for Neo-Conservatism: The priority for the power holder is to keep the security of the state regardless of the morality of the means. Machiavelli discusses frankly, the necessity of cruel actions to keep power. He was in the business of power preservation not piety. According to the originator of Neo-Conservative ideology the leader of the state must stick to the good so long as he can, but, being compelled by necessity, he must be ready to take the way of the evil.

Let me repeat this last principle of Neo-Conservatism because it plays into the “believability factor” when considering claims made by people who accuse the Bush administration of unconscionable actions: “The leader of the state must stick to the good so long as he can, but, being compelled by necessity, he must be ready to take the way of the evil.” These people believe that evil is acceptable and necessary at times!

Shortly before the publication of the Muhammad cartoons, Jyllands-Posten ran a headline reading, “Islam is the Most Belligerent.”

AxisofLogic/ Critical Analysis: "Denmark and Jyllands-Posten: The background to a provocation | By Peter Schwarz
Feb 11, 2006, 10:02

The basic lie in the controversy over the caricatures of the Prophet Muhammad published by Danish and European newspapers is the claim that the conflict is between free speech and religious censorship, or between Western enlightenment and Islamic bigotry.

...

In a country renowned for its tolerance and openness, the social crisis and the betrayals carried out by the old working class organizations have opened the way for the emergence of political forces which systematically encourage xenophobia and racism. The newspaper Jyllands-Posten has played a prominent role in this process.

Last autumn Jyllands-Posten assigned 40 prominent Danish caricaturists to draw the Prophet Muhammad. Twelve responded and the results were published on September 30. The project was deliberately designed to provoke.

According to the cultural editor of the newspaper, Flemming Rose, it was aimed at “testing the limits of self-censorship in Danish public opinion” when it comes to Islam and Muslims. He added: “In a secular society, Muslims have to live with the fact of being ridiculed, scoffed at and made to look ridiculous.”

When the anticipated reaction by the Muslim community failed to arise, the newspaper continued its campaign, determined to create a full-scale scandal. After a week had gone by without protest, journalists turned on Danish Islamic religious leaders who were well known for their fundamentalist views and demanded: “Why don’t you protest?” Eventually, the latter reacted and alerted their co-thinkers in the Middle East.

At this point the head of the Danish government, Andres Fogh Rasmussen, and the xenophobic Danish People’s Party, which is part of the ruling coalition, swung into action. Fogh Rasmussen demonstratively turned down appeals by concerned Arab ambassadors for talks to clarify the issue. Even after 22 former Danish ambassadors appealed to the prime minister to hold discussions with the representatives of Islamic states, Rasmussen maintained his stance, arguing that “freedom of the press” could not be a topic for diplomatic discussion.

...

Shortly before the publication of the Muhammad cartoons, Jyllands-Posten ran a headline reading, “Islam is the Most Belligerent.” The newspaper ran an exposé about an alleged Muslim death-list of Jewish names—until it emerged that the whole thing was a fabrication.

...

The FrankfurtRundshau writes: “Connoisseurs of Danish media will note with no little irony that it is precisely Jyllands-Posten which is now considered to be a beacon for free speech, i.e., the most right-wing of the Danish newspapers, which normally thrashes anyone who dares to advance a different point of view.”

Rumsfeld's Pentagon reissued clearances to Feith, Perle and Wolfowitz ... Feith was relieved of his clearances for allegedly passing sectets to AIPAC

The Raw Story | Pentagon investigation of Iraq war hawk stalling Senate inquiry into pre-war Iraq intelligence: "Larisa Alexandrovna | Published: January 30, 2006

The second part of the Senate investigation into bungled pre-war Iraq intelligence is still being held up by an internal Pentagon investigation of Douglas Feith, one of the war's leading architects, RAW STORY has learned.

As previously reported by Raw Story, the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence (SSCI) inquiry -- titled Phase II -- is waiting on a report from the Pentagon inspector general as to Feith's alleged role in manipulating pre-war intelligence to support a case for war. Feith, who is also being probed by the FBI for his role in an Israeli spy case, resigned in January 2005.

More broadly, a RAW STORY investigation has found that Feith's access to classified information and his alleged wrongdoing can likely be laid at the feet of more senior officials in the Bush Administration -- namely Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld -- who would have had to have overruled Pentagon background checks to reissue Feith's clearances after he was booted from the National Security Council for allegations of espionage in the mid 1980s. ...
...
At the heart of the Senate Intelligence Committee's delay is the fact that Feith and the Defense Department refuse to provide documents and witnesses to the Committee. Senate sources say that Feith and the Pentagon have made the case that they will not share any information until the Senate provides them with full documentation of what the investigation is looking into, documentary evidence that Senate staff have acquired, and any other key findings that Feith's lawyers believe should be made available to them.
...
This lack of oversight has caused great concern among many former military and intelligence sources. One former intelligence source point to "a bigger can of worms" that a Feith investigation may unravel, pointing to the Israeli spy case -- in which Pentagon analyst Larry Franklin passed classified information to a pro-Israeli lobby -- and to the Defense Department's own inability to address security breaches.

In 1978, the current head of the World Bank and former Deputy Defense Secretary Secretary Paul Wolfowitz was investigated for passing classified information through AIPAC, the same organization that Franklin is charged with passing state secrets to.

Wolfowitz, who at the time was working for the Arms Control and Disarmament Agency (ACDA), was himself brought in by yet another high level alleged leaker, Richard Perle. Perle, too, is being investigated in the current AIPAC case.

Perle, who most recently served as chairman of the Pentagon Defense Policy Board and quietly resigned after the AIPAC case broke, was alleged to have passed on highly classified information to the Israeli embassy when he was a foreign policy aide for Senator Henry M. "Scoop" Jackson in 1970.

Perle was instrumental in bringing Feith into several positions, starting in the early 80s. By the mid-1980s Feith was relieved of his clearances for allegations of passing secrets to AIPAC, bringing the question of clearances full circle.

Rumsfeld seen to reinstate clearances

Despite their checkered past, Rumsfeld's Pentagon reissued clearances to Feith, Perle and Wolfowitz. Clearances were also issued to several of Feith's consultants, some of whom were major players in the Iran Contra scandal. ...

"Fixed" Intelligence from Feith's "Gestapo Office,"

"Fixed" Intelligence from Feith's "Gestapo Office,": "'By Walter C. Uhler | 01/21/06 'ICH'

The CIA and the Bush Administration's Impeachable Lies about Iraq's Prewar Links to al Qaeda

Except in the cynical, zealous or spiritually clouded minds of his right wing devotees, it's become a well-established (if under reported) fact that President George W. Bush is a serial liar, if not a congenital liar.1 For example, after The New York Times very belatedly leaked Mr. Bush's unconstitutional order permitting the National Security Agency to eavesdrop on U.S. citizens without obtaining the required court-approved warrants, Bush defended his directive as a 'vital tool' in the war against terrorism.

But, as liars commonly do, Bush seems to have forgotten that in April 2004 he told an audience in Buffalo, New York: 'When we're talking about chasing down terrorists, we're talking about getting a court order before we do so.' He also told the audience that precisely because it was 'the United States government talking about wiretap,' Americans could rest assured that 'constitutional guarantees are in place.' 2"
...

The brief answer is: Because Douglas Feith's PCEG (which would merge into the Office of Special Plans) was still feeding him the bogus intelligence that confirmed what he already "knew." The PCEG did not simply "study the policy implications of relationships among terrorist organizations and their sources of support," as Feith falsely testified to the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence (SSCI), but also "reviewed both raw and finished intelligence and did undertake their own intelligence analysis after looking at the IC [Intelligence Community] products and discovering that what they needed had not been produced by the IC." ¹⁸

What's worse, without exception, Feith's PCEG produced intelligence products that consistently exaggerated the number, type, significance and danger of the ties it found between Iraq and al Qaeda. And although it was wrong on every one of its assessments, not one of its errors resulted in underestimating the threat. This pattern of errors in one direction suggests fraud and the 'fixing" of intelligence, not mere incompetence.

But, thanks to the intervention of Feith's boss, Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz, the politicized intelligence gathered by this rogue "Iraqi intelligence cell in the OUSD(P)" ¹⁹ -- "rogue," because it was operating outside the established intelligence agencies funded by Congress and subject to congressional oversight -- was presented to (and impressed) Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, briefed to Director of Central Intelligence, George Tenet (but minus the slide disparaging the CIA), and ultimately presented to Condoleezza Rice's deputy (Stephen Hadley) and Cheney's Chief of Staff, "Scooter" Libby. That last briefing took place without the knowledge of Tenet.
...

Feith staffed the PCEG with his co-author of the 1996 report (and fellow unregistered agent for Israel) David Wurmser, as well as Michael Maloof. Wurmser and Maloof would be "working deductively, not inductively: The premise was true; facts would be found to confirm it." ⁶⁴ As the authors of Vanity Faire write in their exceptional expose, The Path to War, "the advocates of regime change in Iraq realized that, for any American invasion to enlist support, both domestically and internationally, links between Saddam Hussein and al Qaeda needed to be proved." ⁶⁵ Thus, in light of the CIA's September 21, 2001 President's Daily Brief, somebody needed to fix the facts!

At this point, one might ask, as George Packer does in his highly acclaimed book, The Assassin's Gate: "Does this mean that a pro-Likud cabal insinuated its way into the high councils of the U.S. government and took hold of the apparatus of American foreign policy to serve Israeli interests?" In general, Packer's answer is no. But "For Feith and Wurmser," Packer answers yes: "the security of Israel was probably the prime mover." ^66
...

Inspired by Mossad, Feith's rogue intelligence cell appears to have solicited, reexamined, digested and regurgitated evidence from the programmed liars put forward by Chalabi's Iraqi National Congress - evidence that the Intelligence Community already had considered, before dismissing as unreliable. Then, as Seymour Hersh has noted: "A routine settled in: the Pentagon's defector reports, classified 'secret,' would be funneled to newspapers, but subsequent analyses of the reports by intelligence agencies - scathing but also classified - would remain secret."¹²⁹

Perhaps, that explains why even Secretary of State Colin Powell privately referred to Feith's intelligence cell as "Feith's Gestapo office." How ironic! Neocon Jews running a "Gestapo office." Finally, and most significantly, let's not forget that this "un-American intelligence" got it wrong!

Can the United States still be called a "democracy," if a majority of its citizens fails to recognize and redress such "un-American" behavior? ("Un-American," at least according to our ideals, if not our actual history.) ...

Riskiest manifestation of the "neoconservative revolution": the push to unilaterally invade and democratize Iraq

The Forward Newspaper Online: The Neoconservative Persuasion: "By Gal Beckerman | January 6, 2006

Acknowledging the Jewishness of neoconservatism has always triggered the red, flashing lights of antisemitism, especially since the start of the Iraq War (with extra points if it's Pat Buchanan doing the acknowledging). But there is some truth to the suspicion. If there is an intellectual movement in America to whose invention Jews can lay sole claim, neoconservatism is it. It's a thought one imagines most American Jews, overwhelmingly liberal, will find horrifying. And yet it is a fact that as a political philosophy, neoconservatism was born among the children of Jewish immigrants and is now largely the intellectual domain of those immigrants' grandchildren. Understanding what might be Jewish about this movement (or "persuasion" as its godfather, Irving Kristol, prefers it be called) should be possible without being accused of conspiracy theorizing about secret cabals pulling strings for Israel.
...

Strangely absent from Friedman's books is any discussion of the latest and certainly riskiest manifestation of the "neoconservative revolution": the push to unilaterally invade and democratize Iraq. It's a strange oversight for a book published two years after the start of the war. Friedman wouldn't have needed even to introduce new characters. Among the war's most passionate supporters, after all, were Norman Podhoretz and William Kristol (son of Irving).

The omission is glaring. Not just because Iraq is the next chapter in the neoconservative story, but because it is in Iraq that neoconservatism will be either vindicated or buried forever. Maybe even more than Reagan's Cold War policies, the Iraq War was the most dramatic embodiment of two key Podhoretz tenets, the "aggressive" side that would keep America on the initiative, and the "idealistic" that dreams of making theworld safer by remaking it in our image. For neoconservatives, the 9/11 attacks signaled

the start of a new global war against an ideology as morally corrupt and potentially as apocalyptically destructive as Nazism and communism. Podhoretz famously dubbed it World War IV, the Cold War having been World World III. (It was 1939 again.) The threat had to be confronted head on. And this time the present danger had no one obvious home, other than where the peripatetic Osama bin Laden parked himself. Accordingly, a dramatic, history-altering gesture was necessary to reshape the entire Middle East. The intransigent Iraqi dictator appeared to be the perfect target and Iraq the perfect first domino that, once tipped, would remodel the region.
Afterward, however, with no weapons of mass destruction and no Iraqi connection to 9/11 in evidence, the more idealistic motives of the neoconservatives took center stage. Describing an "evil" that he named "Islamic Radicalism," "militant Jihadism" or, most expressively, "Islamo-fascism," President Bush spent almost the entirety of an October 2005 speech drawing connections between Nazism, communism and this new totalitarianism. Proclaiming that "our enemy is utterly committed," Bush said that "the civilized world knows very well that other fanatics in history, from Hitler to Stalin to Pol Pot, consumed whole nations in war and genocide before leaving the stage of history. Evil men, obsessed with ambition and unburdened by conscience, must be taken very seriously — and we must stop them before their crimes can multiply." ...

Security adviser [Stephen Hadley] named as source in CIA scandal

Security adviser named as source in CIA scandal - Sunday Times - Times Online: "November 20, 2005

THE mysterious source who gave America’s foremost journalist, Bob Woodward, a tip-off about the CIA agent at the centre of one of Washington’s biggest political storms was Stephen Hadley, the White House national security adviser, according to lawyers close to the investigation.

Woodward, the Washington Post reporter who broke the Watergate scandal that forced President Richard Nixon out of office, has refused publicly to divulge the name of his informant without permission, which has thus far been withheld.
...
Two years ago, when Plame’s identity was first revealed, Hadley was Condoleezza Rice’s deputy at the NSC. He is also thought to have been a key source for two books by Woodward on the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks. ...

Dual Disloyalty: Feith and the Occupations of Gaza and Iraq .... He pushed hard for both. Others are paying the price in blood.

The Village Voice: The Bush Beat: "Morning Report 8/19/05
Dual Disloyalty: Feith and the Occupations of Gaza and Iraq

He pushed hard for both. Others are paying the price in blood.

However, in all the stories about places like Kfar Darom, as in the recounting of the current misery in Baghdead, one reactionary gets little notice. No one is mentioning Doug Feith, who has been mostly successful in hiding his true colors as a right-wing Zionist while carrying out his fanatical wing's aims in Iraq.

The erstwhile Pentagon official is a key player in not only the disastrous occupation of Iraq but in trying to make sure Israel clung to the disastrous occupation of Gaza.

Feith is such a radical that he won't even refer to the West Bank as the West Bank — he uses the biblical names Judea and Samaria. And he doesn't even like to say "occupied territories," even though they are. In fact, our own government officially refers to them as "occupied" and freely uses the term "West Bank." Just look at the CIA map of Israel above, and you'll see that Gaza and the West Bank are separate from Israel, and each carries an asterisk.

But there's no asterisk attached to Feith's version of Israel. The son of a founder of Likud, he has pursued a radical Zionist policy at the expense of Israel's own Jews, a majority of whom don't favor the settlers.

His behavior as a Pentagon official toward the Arabs in Iraq is one of the shameful legacies of our unjustified invasion. We know quite a lot — although not enough — about Feith's role in propelling the U.S. into war and beyond. As one of the most prominent neocons, he hammered away at the need for regime change. And of course, he was one of the key Pentagon officials who didn't plan for the aftermath. He was in charge, however, of figuring out how to handle our Arab prisoners.

Bad idea. He's almost as anti-Arab as the fanatical anti-Semites over in the Arab camp are anti-Jewish.

Does Feith have divided loyalties? That's a common allegation leveled against those neocons and others who seem to put Israel's interests before those of the United States. It's clear, though, that Feith doesn't. His loyalty belongs to Israel and to its extremist politicians like Bibi Netanyahu, for whom he was an adviser.

Maybe the details of Feith's loyalties will emerge in the unfolding of the AIPAC spy scandal. One of Feith's direct subordinates, Larry Franklin, has already been charged with leaking U.S. secrets to Israel, and two major AIPAC officials (fired only after the scandal broke) have also been indicted. ...

The Weird Men Behind George W Bush's War .... Cheney stacked asministration with hardline neo-cons took advantage of Bush's ignorance and inexperience

The Weird Men Behind George W Bush's War: "By Michael Lind | 04/07/03 'New Statesman (UK)' -- --

America's allies and enemies alike are baffled. What is going on in the United States? Who is making foreign policy? And what are they trying to achieve? Quasi-Marxist explanations involving big oil or American capitalism are mistaken. Yes, American oil companies and contractors will accept the spoils of the kill in Iraq. But the oil business, with its Arabist bias, did not push for this war any more than it supports the Bush administration's close alliance with Ariel Sharon.
...
The core group now in charge consists of neoconservative defence intellectuals (they are called 'neoconservatives' because many of them started off as anti-Stalinist leftists or liberals before moving to the far right). Inside the government, the chief defence intellectuals include Paul Wolfowitz, the deputy secretary of defence. He is the defence mastermind of the Bush administration; Donald Rumsfeld is an elderly figurehead who holds the position of defence secretary only because Wolfowitz himself is too controversial. Others include Douglas Feith, the number three at the Pentagon; Lewis 'Scooter' Libby, a Wolfowitz protege who is Cheney's chief of staff; John R Bolton, a right-winger assigned to the State Department to keep Colin Powell in check; and Elliott Abrams, recently appointed to head Middle East policy at the National Security Council. On the outside are James Woolsey, the former CIA director, who has tried repeatedly to link both 9/11 and the anthrax letters in the US to Saddam Hussein, and Richard Perle, who has just resigned from his unpaid defence department advisory post after a lobbying scandal. Most of these 'experts' never served in the military. But their headquarters is now the civilian defence secretary's office, where these Republican political appointees are despised and distrusted by the largely Republican career soldiers.

Most neoconservative defence intellectuals have their roots on the left, not the right. They are products of the largely Jewish-American Trotskyist movement of the 1930s and 1940s, which morphed into anti-communist liberalism between the 1950s and 1970s and finally into a kind of militaristic and imperial right with no precedents in American culture or political history. Their admiration for the Israeli Likud party's tactics, including preventive warfare such as Israel's 1981 raid on Iraq's Osirak nuclear reactor, is mixed with odd bursts of ideological enthusiasm for 'democracy'. They call their revolutionary ideology 'Wilsonianism' (after President Woodrow Wilson), but it is really Trotsky's theory of the permanent revolution mingled with the far-right Likud strain of Zionism. Genuine American Wilsonians believe in self-determination for people such as the Palestinians.

The neo-con defence intellectuals, as well as being in or around the actual Pentagon, are at the centre of a metaphorical 'pentagon' of the Israel lobby and the religious right, plus conservative think-tanks, foundations and media empires. Think-tanks such as the American Enterprise Institute (AEI) and the Centre for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) provide homes for neo-con 'in-and-outers' when they are out of government (Perle is a fellow at AEI). The money comes not so much from corporations as from decades-old conservative foundations, such as the Bradley and Olin foundations, which spend down the estates of long-dead tycoons. Neoconservative foreign policy does not reflect business interests in any direct way. The neo-cons are ideologues, not opportunists.

The major link between the conservative think-tanks and the Israel lobby is the Washington-based and Likud-supporting Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs (Jinsa), which co-opts many non-Jewish defence experts by sending them on trips to Israel. It flew out the retired General Jay Garner, now slated by Bush to be proconsul of occupied Iraq. In October 2000, he co-signed a Jinsa letter that began: 'We . . . believe that during the current upheavals in Israel, the Israel Defence Forces have exercised remarkable restraint in the face of lethal violence orchestrated by the leadership of the Palestinian Authority.'

The Israel lobby itself is divided into Jewish and Christian wings. Wolfowitz and Feith have close ties to the Jewish-American Israel lobby. Wolfowitz, who has relatives in Israel, has served as the Bush administration's liaison to the American Israel Public Affairs Committee. Feith was given an award by the Zionist Organisation of America, citing him as a 'pro-Israel activist'. While out of power in the Clinton years, Feith collaborating with Perle, co-authored for Likud a policy paper that advised the Israeli government to end the Oslo peace process, reoccupy the territories and crush Yasser Arafat's government. ...
...
Then they had a stroke of luck - Cheney was put in charge of the presidential transition (the period between the election in November and the accession to office in January). Cheney used this opportunity to stack the administration with his hardline allies. Instead of becoming the de facto president in foreign policy, as many had expected, Secretary of State Powell found himself boxed in by Cheney's right-wing network, including Wolfowitz, Perle, Feith, Bolton and Libby.

The neo-cons took advantage of Bush's ignorance and inexperience. ...

What Turned Brent Scowcroft Against the Bush Administration?'

The Washington Note Archives: "From 'Breaking Ranks: What Turned Brent Scowcroft Against the Bush Administration?', Jeffrey Goldberg, The New Yorker, 31 October 2005
...
Scowcroft on Iraq and Neocon Idealism

A principal reason that the Bush Administration gave no thought to unseating Saddam was that Brent Scowcroft gave no thought to it. An American occupation of Iraq would be politically and militarily untenable, Scowcroft told Bush. And though the President had employed the rhetoric of moral necessity to make the case for war, Scowcroft said, he would not let his feelings about good and evil dictate the advice he gave the President."
...
Scowcroft on Iraq & Israel

"The obsession of the region . . . is the Israeli-Palestinian conflict," Scowcroft wrote in the Journal. "If we were seen to be turning our back on that bitter conflict -- which the region, rightly or wrongly, perceives to be clearly within our power to resolve -- in order to go after Iraq, there would be an explosion of outrage against us." Scowcroft went on to say that the United States was capable of defeating Saddam's military. "But it would not be a cakewalk. On the contrary, it undoubtedly would be very expensive -- with serious consequences for the U.S. and global economy -- and could as well be bloody. In fact, Saddam would be likely to conclude he had nothing left to lose, leading him to unleash whatever weapons of mass destruction he possesses."
...
Scowcroft on Cheney: "The Real Anomaly"

"The real anomaly in the Administration is Cheney," Scowcroft said. "I consider Cheney a good friend -- I've known him for thirty years. But Dick Cheney I don't know anymore." He went on, "I don't think Dick Cheney is a neocon, but allied to the core of neocons is that bunch who thought we made a mistake in the first Gulf War, that we should have finished the job. There was another bunch who were traumatized by 9/11, and who thought, 'The world's going to hell and we've got to show we're not going to take this, and we've got to respond, and Afghanistan is O.K., but it's not sufficient.'" Scowcroft supported the invasion of Afghanistan as a "direct response" to terrorism.
...
The disintegrating relationship between Scowcroft and Condoleezza Rice has not escaped the notice of their colleagues from the first Bush Administration. She was a political-science professor at Stanford when, in 1989, Scowcroft hired her to serve as a Soviet expert on the National Security Council.

Scowcroft found her bright -- "brighter than I was" -- and personable, and he brought her all the way inside, to the Bush family circle. When Scowcroft published his Wall Street Journal article, Rice telephoned him, according to several people with knowledge of the call. "She said, 'How could you do this to us?'" a Scowcroft friend recalled. "What bothered Brent more than Condi yelling at him was the fact that here she is, the national-security adviser, and she's not interested in hearing what a former national-security adviser had to say."
...
Yet the two do not see each other much anymore. According to friends of Scowcroft, Rice has asked him to call her to set up a dinner, but he has not, apparently, pursued the invitation. The last time the two had dinner, nearly two years ago, it ended unhappily, Scowcroft acknowledged.

"We were having dinner just when Sharon said he was going to pull out of Gaza," at the end of 2003. "She said, 'At least there's some good news,' and I said, 'That's terrible news.' She said, 'What do you mean?' And I said that for Sharon this is not the first move, this is the last move. He's getting out of Gaza because he can't sustain eight thousand settlers with half his Army protecting them. Then, when he's out, he will have an Israel that he can control and a Palestinian state atomized enough that it can’t be a problem." Scowcroft added, "We had a terrible fight on that."

They also argued about Iraq. "She says we're going to democratize Iraq, and I said, 'Condi, you're not going to democratize Iraq,' and she said, 'You know, you're just stuck in the old days,' and she comes back to this thing that we've tolerated an autocratic Middle East for fifty years and so on and so forth," he said. Then a barely perceptible note of satisfaction entered his voice, and he said, "But we've had fifty years of peace."
...
Scowcroft said of Wolfowitz, "He's got a utopia out there. We're going to transform the Middle East, and then there won't be war anymore. He can make them democratic. He is a tough-minded idealist, but where he is truly an idealist is that he brushes away questions, says, 'It won't happen,' whereas I would say, 'It's likely to happen and therefore you can't take the chance.' Paul's idealism sweeps away doubts."

Wolfowitz, for his part, said to me, "It's absurdly unrealistic, demonstrably unrealistic, to ignore how strong the desire for freedom is." Scowcroft said that he is equally concerned about Wolfowitz's unwillingness to contemplate bad outcomes and Kagan's willingness to embrace them on principle. "What the realist fears is the consequences of idealism," he said. "The reason I part with the neocons is that I don't think in any reasonable time frame the objective of democratizing the Middle East can be successful. If you can do it, fine, but I don't think you can, and in the process of trying to do it you can make the Middle East a lot worse."

He added, "I'm a realist in the sense that I'm a cynic about human nature."
...

Powell's Chief of Staff: Dick Cheney and a handful of others had hijacked the government's foreign policy apparatus

FT.com / World / US - Cheney 'cabal' hijacked foreign policy: "Published: October 20 2005 00:00 | Last updated: October 20 2005 00:19

Vice-President Dick Cheney and a handful of others had hijacked the government's foreign policy apparatus, deciding in secret to carry out policies that had left the US weaker and more isolated in the world, the top aide to former Secretary of State Colin Powell claimed on Wednesday.

In a scathing attack on the record of President George W. Bush, Colonel Lawrence Wilkerson, chief of staff to Mr Powell until last January, said: “What I saw was a cabal between the vice-president of the United States, Richard Cheney, and the secretary of defense, Donald Rumsfeld, on critical issues that made decisions that the bureaucracy did not know were being made.

“Now it is paying the consequences of making those decisions in secret, but far more telling to me is America is paying the consequences.” ...

Niger Uranium Forgery Mystery Solved?- Italians name Michael Ledeen as conduit ... former CIA officers Clarridge and Wowlf were the principal forgers?

Niger Uranium Forgery Mystery Solved?- by Justin Raimondo: "October 19, 2005 | The Fitzgerald/Plame investigation goes in a new direction

Amid all the brouhaha over whether I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, Karl Rove, or any number of Bush administration insiders had a hand in leaking the name of covert CIA agent Valerie Plame, the essential crime at the core of the investigation – and its probable starting point – often gets lost in the shuffle. ...
...
In early October 2002, Italian journalist Elisabetta Burba, a writer for Italy's Panorama magazine, delivered some documents to the U.S. embassy in Rome: a cache of letters and other papers purporting to be correspondence between officials of the Niger government and the Iraqis relating to the acquisition of uranium "yellowcake." The documents soon found their way to Washington, D.C., where key administration officials were quick to incorporate them into their "talking points" for war with Iraq – and into Bush's Jan. 28, 2003 speech.

When the IAEA asked to see evidence of the administration's contentions, they were put off, until finally the Niger uranium documents were handed over. It took IAEA scientists just a few hours to demonstrate that the documents were not only forgeries, but were particularly crude ones at that – an amateur could have debunked them using Google. As the Washington Post reported, one administration official's response was "We fell for it."
...
Even as the FBI was following the trail of the forgers, the Italians were looking into the matter from their end. A parliamentary committee was charged with investigating, and they issued a heavily redacted report:...

"Previous versions of the report were redacted and had all the names removed, though it was possible to guess who was involved. This version names Michael Ledeen as the conduit for the report and indicates that former CIA officers Duane Clarridge and Alan Wolf were the principal forgers. All three had business interests with Chalabi."
...
I am hardly the first to implicate Ledeen in connection with the Niger uranium forgeries. Former CIA counterterrorism officials Vince Cannistraro and Larry Johnson have pointed the finger in Ledeen's direction. As the latter put it:

"Italy's SISME [sic] also reportedly had a hand in producing the forged documents delivered to the U.S. embassy in Rome in early October 2003 [sic: should be 2002 – Ed.] that purported to show a deal with Iraq to buy uranium. Many in the intelligence community are convinced that a prominent neocon with long-standing ties to SISME played a role in the forgery. The truth of that proposition remains to be proven. This much is certain, either SISME or someone with ties to SISME, helped forge and circulate those documents which some tried to use to bolster the case to go to war with Iraq."

Cannistraro, asked by an interviewer if Ledeen was involved with the forgers, said "you'd be very close." ...

Good news ... as long as Ambassador Bolton is in New York [at the UN], he will not be wreaking diplomatic havoc anywhere else.

Ambassador Bolton - New York Times: Published: August 2, 2005

If there's a positive side to President Bush's appointment of John Bolton as ambassador to the United Nations yesterday, it's that as long as Mr. Bolton is in New York, he will not be wreaking diplomatic havoc anywhere else. Talks with North Korea, for instance, have been looking more productive since Mr. Bolton left the State Department, and it's hard not to think that Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice's generally positive performance in office is due, in part, to her canniness in dispatching Mr. Bolton out of Washington.

But the appointment is, of course, terrible news for the United Nations, whose diplomats have heard weeks of Senate testimony about Mr. Bolton's lack of respect for their institution and his deeply undiplomatic, bullying style of doing business. Senator George Voinovich, the Ohio Republican who became one of Mr. Bolton's strongest critics, said yesterday that he planned to send the new ambassador a book on how to be an effective manager. It couldn't hurt, but this may be the first time a world superpower has used its top United Nations post as a spot for the remedial training of a troublesome government employee.
...
The problem here from the beginning has been that Mr. Bush clearly has little respect for either the United Nations or international diplomacy in general.

Guardian Unlimited | Special reports | Bush bypasses Senate to install neo-con at UN

Guardian Unlimited | Special reports | Bush bypasses Senate to install neo-con at UN: "James Sturcke and agencies | Monday August 1, 2005

The US president, George Bush, today bypassed the senate and installed the controversial neo-conservative John Bolton as ambassador to the UN.

Mr Bush took advantage of his power to fill vacancies without senate approval while Congress is in recess. Under the constitution, Mr Bolton's recess appointment during the senators' August break will last until the next session of Congress, which begins in January 2007.
...
Mr Bolton's appointment ends a five-month impasse between the administration and Senate Democrats. The battle grabbed headlines in April amid accusations that Mr Bolton abused subordinates and twisted intelligence to shape his conservative ideology. ...

State Dept admits Bolton gave inaccurate answers: nominees swear out affidavits stating the information is true and accurate.

Excite News: "State Dept admits Bolton gave inaccurate answers | Jul 28, 10:52 PM (ET) | By Vicki Allen and Saul Hudson

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The State Department reversed itself on Thursday night and acknowledged that President Bush's U.N. ambassador nominee gave Congress inaccurate information about an investigation he was involved in.

The acknowledgment came after the State Department had earlier insisted nominee John Bolton's "answer was truthful" when he said he had not been questioned or provided information to jury or government investigations in the past five years.

"When Mr. Bolton completed his form during the Senate confirmation process he did not recall being interviewed by the State Department inspector general. Therefore his form as submitted was inaccurate in this regard and he will correct the form," State Department spokesman Sean McCormack said.

Earlier, Sen. Joseph Biden of Delaware said he had information Bolton was interviewed as part of a State Department-CIA joint investigation on intelligence lapses that led to the Bush administration's pre-Iraq war claim that Iraq tried to buy uranium from Niger.

Biden, the top Democrat on the Foreign Relations Committee, said that should have been noted on the questionnaire, for which nominees swear out affidavits stating the information is true and accurate.

"It now appears that Mr. Bolton's answers may not meet that standard," Biden wrote in a letter to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice.

Republicans prodding Bush to yield documents on Bolton

Republicans prodding Bush to yield documents on Bolton: "Thursday, June 23, 2005 | BY JAMES KUHNHENN | KRT NEWS SERVICE

WASHINGTON -- A growing number of Senate Republicans say John Bolton won't be confirmed as United Nations ambassador unless the White House turns over documents that Democrats say they need to assess his fitness for the post.

Though the White House continued yesterday to demand an up- or-down vote on Bolton, these Republican senators say the Senate is in a standoff that only President Bush can resolve.

'I hope the president will take a very hard look at the documents,' Sen. Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.), a member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said in an interview with Knight Ridder.

"Unless we resolve this dilemma quickly, Mr. Bolton is not going to be the U.N. ambassador. ... The president should understand that we're at an impasse. It may be more important to preserve the doctrine of separation of powers than to have John Bolton in the U.N."

Alexander's comments came after Sen. Trent Lott (R-Miss.), the former Senate majority leader, urged the White House to turn over documents to Bolton's two leading Democratic foes, Sens. Joseph Biden of Delaware and Christopher Dodd of Connecticut. Another Republican, Sen. Lincoln Chafee of Rhode Island, also called for the White House to relent.

Bush says Democrats stalling on Bolton; Yale classmates call U.N. ambassador nominee unfit

Bush says Democrats stalling on Bolton; Yale classmates call U.N. ambassador nominee unfit: "'I view that as just another stall tactic, another way to delay, another way to not allow Bolton to get an up-or-down vote,' Bush said.

'I would hope that when they get back that they stop stalling and give the man a vote. Just give him a simple up-or-down vote.'

Meanwhile, Yale classmates of Bolton's wrote to senators to oppose the nomination.

The 76 signers include cartoonist Garry Trudeau, who lampooned Bolton in his 'Doonesbury' strip in May. Others were fellow members of the Class of 1970 who participated in a 35th reunion over the Memorial Day weekend.

'We are embarrassed and ashamed that the Bush administration has nominated someone so manifestly unsuited to represent our country at the United Nations,' the Yale classmates wrote.

'As his classmates, we do not believe that Mr. Bolton has exhibited the values of civility, light and truth which our shared institution represents.'

Bush also attended Yale and graduated in 1968."

Analysts Behind Iraq Intelligence Were Rewarded

Analysts Behind Iraq Intelligence Were Rewarded: "By Walter Pincus | Washington Post Staff Writer | Saturday, May 28, 2005; Page A01

Two Army analysts whose work has been cited as part of a key intelligence failure on Iraq -- the claim that aluminum tubes sought by the Baghdad government were most likely meant for a nuclear weapons program rather than for rockets -- have received job performance awards in each of the past three years, officials said.

The civilian analysts, former military men considered experts on foreign and U.S. weaponry, work at the Army's National Ground Intelligence Center (NGIC), one of three U.S. agencies singled out for particular criticism by President Bush's commission that investigated U.S. intelligence."

MSN Money - Financial Times Business News: Voinovich continues campaign against Bolton nomination

MSN Money - Financial Times Business News: Voinovich continues campaign against Bolton nomination: "May 24, 2005 11:42 PM ET

The Republican senator who snubbed the White House by opposing John Bolton's nomination for US ambassador to the United Nations on Tuesday took the unusual move of asking his colleagues to vote against Mr Bolton.

George Voinovich, an Ohio Republican, wrote a letter to his fellow senators, arguing that the appointment of Mr Bolton, the outgoing undersecretary of state for arms control, would hurt US efforts to improve relations with its allies.

"John Bolton's nomination sends a negative message to the world community," Mr Voinovich wrote.

"In these dangerous times, we cannot afford to put at risk our nation's ability to successfully wage and win the war on terror with a controversial and ineffective Ambassador to the United Nations."

Rice congratulates Chalabi, who fell from US favor

Reuters AlertNet - Rice congratulates Chalabi, who fell from US favor: "04 May 2005 22:16:58 GMT | Source: Reuters

WASHINGTON, May 4 (Reuters) - Ahmad Chalabi, the one-time Pentagon favorite who fell from grace in Washington amid accusations that he gave U.S. intelligence to Iran, has received a congratulatory call from Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice about his new Iraqi Cabinet posts.

U.S. officials said Rice called the secular Shi'ite politician on Tuesday to congratulate him on becoming deputy prime minister and acting oil minister in Iraq's first elected government since the fall of Saddam Hussein in 2003."

'Rock Solid' Evidence [neocon favorite] Chalabi Spied for Iran

FOXNews.com - U.S. & World - 'Rock Solid' Evidence Chalabi Spied for Iran: "'Friday, May 21, 2004

BAGHDAD, Iraq — U.S. officials believe they have "rock solid" evidence that Iraqi Governing Council member Ahmad Chalabi (search), once a darling of the American government, passed secrets to Iran, Fox News has learned.

"There is no need for an investigation because we're quite certain he did it," one senior Bush administration official said.

Bush is intent on painting allies and enemies in the Middle East as evil

Bush is intent on painting allies and enemies in the Middle East as evil: "By Robert Fisk | 09/10/02 'The Independent' - -
...
Only The Nation among all of America's newspapers and magazines has dared to point out that a large number of former Israeli lobbyists are now working within the American administration and the Bush plans for the Middle East – which could cause a massive political upheaval in the Arab world – fit perfectly into Israel's own dreams for the region. The magazine listed Vice-President Dick Cheney – the arch-hawk in the US administration – and John Bolton, now under-secretary of state for Arms Control, with Douglas Feith, the third most senior executive at the Pentagon, as members of the advisory board of the pro-Israeli Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs (Jinsa) before joining the Bush government. Richard Perle, chairman of the Pentagon's Defence Policy Board, is still an adviser on the institute, as is the former CIA director James Woolsey.

Michael Ledeen, described by The Nation as "one of the most influential 'Jinsans' in Washington" has been calling for "total war" against "terror" – with "regime change" for Syria, Iran, Iraq, Saudi Arabia and the Palestinian Authority. Mr Perle advises the Defence Secretary, Donald Rumsfeld – who refers to the West Bank and Gaza as "the so-called occupied territories" – and arranged the anti-Saudi "kernel of evil" briefing by Laurent Murawiec that so outraged the Saudi royal family last month. The Saudi regime may itself be in great danger as the princes of the House of Saud attempt to seize more power for themselves in advance of the depart-ure of the dying King Fahd.

Jinsa's website says it exists to "inform the American defence and foreign affairs community about the important role Israel can and does play in bolstering democratic interests in the Mediterranean and the Middle East". Next month, Michael Rubin of the right-wing and pro-Israeli American Enterprise Institute – who referred to the outgoing UN human rights commissioner Mary Robinson as an abettor of "terrorism" – joins the US Defence Department as an Iran-Iraq "expert".

According to The Nation, Irving Moskovitz, the California bingo magnate who has funded settlements in the Israeli-occupied territories, is a donor as well as a director of Jinsa.

President Bush, of course, will not be talking about the influence of these pro-Israeli lobbyists when he presents his vision of the Middle East at the United Nations on Thursday.