Quote Originally Posted by SteveMetz View Post
I'm surprised it's taken this long, but the "neocon" architects of the Iraq disaster seemed to have agreed on an alibi and it is---drum roll--the "stab in the back."

Last week was the Post's story of Douglas Feith's forthcoming book; today the Times includes an essay by one of the movement's other ideologues-in-chief, Richard Perle, which lays it at the feet of, "Secretary of State Colin Powell; the national security adviser, Condoleezza Rice; and the director of central intelligence, George Tenet."

This whole process is both nauseating--it sickens me that people like Perle and Feith without the slightest shred of honor or integrity shape our nation's policy--and almost humorous as both spin like dervishes to absolve the people who most shaped the decision: the President, the Vice President, and the Secretary of Defense.

Feith's "stab in the back" theory has evolved. I heard him give a talk at AEI a few years ago where he trial ballooned the idea of blaming the military. I guess once he figured that wouldn't fly, he had to settle on the State Department and CIA. Anything, of course, but placing the responsibility where it belongs--on his desk, that of the Deputy SECDEF, the SECDEF, the VP, and POTUS.
Feith is just disgusting. Whoever pointed out the blaring "Doug Feith is a patriot" quote on his website from General Peter Pace on a SWC thread a week or two back, that was great stuff.

Perle's been an open and shut case for me since reading Charlie Wilson's War last year. He, Oliver North, and a couple of other Reagan Administration guys had some ludicrous plan to spirit Red Army defectors out of Afghanistan and use them to form a second Vlasov's Army that would bring down the USSR. The experienced CIA guys were incredulous, said it was a joke, but the plan went ahead. In the end they got two shattered conscripts who had been repeatedly raped by the mujahideen, one of whom later robbed a convenience store in Tyson's Corner. Read the book's account of it, the story is hilarious.

I'm continually amazed at how think tanks, the chattering class, Capitol Hill, and even the upper reaches of the Executive Branch are populated by folks with no earned knowledge of the real world, or often even of their subject matter. Prime case is Michael Ledeen, the neocon "Iran expert." He's never even been to Iran. And people listen to this guy!