Shocking News: Paul Wolfowitz Misleads On Current Iraq Situation

Andrew Sullivan accused Paul Wolfowitz of lying about ISIS.

We should say al Qaeda. ISIS sounds like some obscure thing; it’s even more obscure when you say Shia and Sunni … It means nothing to Americans whereas al Qaeda means everything to Americans … My point is that these are the same people, they are affiliated with the same people, who attacked the United States on 9/11 and still have an intention of attacking the United States and attacking Europe …

The problem with Wolfowitz's remarks is the al-Qaeda’s General Command released a statement disavowing ties with the ISIS.

ISIS “is not a branch of the al-Qaeda group . . . does not have an organizational relationship with it and [al-Qaeda] is not the group responsible for their actions,” al-Qaeda’s General Command said in a statement, marking the first time the leadership has formally repudiated an affiliate.

The bombing attacks by ISIS angered the Syrian civilian population. The ISIS has tortured women, killed journalist and killed government employees. The ISIS is so brutal that both the United States and Iran view the organization as a security threat. ISIS was generating bad PR al-Qaeda on the Arab Street. The deal-breaking was ISIS defying al-Qaeda orders.

The notion of the U.S. seeking help from Iran came from Secretary of State Kerry, who said he “would not rule out anything” to end the “existential threat” ISIS poses to Iraq. “We’re open to discussions if there is something constructive that can be contributed by Iran, if Iran is prepared to do something that is going to respect the integrity and sovereignty of Iraq,” Kerry told Yahoo News.

ISIS is extremely dangerous. What ISIS isn't is part of al-Qaeda. The goal of ISIS is to take control of Syria and Iraq by force. ISIS is currently more a regional threat. Wolfowitz's statement has no basis in fact.

Jon Stewart Vs the Neoconservatives

The Daily Show
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Jon Stewart plays clips of how wrong the neoconservatives were about the Iraq war. Stewart saves his best jokes for John McCain. However, Stewart's Lindsey Graham's impression is the best moment in the video.

Harry Reid Vs the Neoconservatives

Harry Reid takes to the Senate floor to point out how neoconservatives have been wrong on Iraq.

Money quote:

Reid: Being on the wrong side of Dick Cheney is being on the right side of history.

Amen.

Same Neoconservatives Wrong on Iraq Urging Military Action On Syria

A group of neoconservatives that were wrong about the Iraq war are now urging military action against the regime in Syria. The letter was (unsurprisingly) published in The Weekly Standard.

"At a minimum, the United States, along with willing allies and partners, should use standoff weapons and airpower to target the Syrian dictatorship’s military units that were involved in the recent large-scale use of chemical weapons. It should also provide vetted moderate elements of Syria’s armed opposition with the military support required to identify and strike regime units armed with chemical weapons," the experts write.

"Moreover, the United States and other willing nations should consider direct military strikes against the pillars of the Assad regime. The objectives should be not only to ensure that Assad’s chemical weapons no longer threaten America, our allies in the region or the Syrian people, but also to deter or destroy the Assad regime’s airpower and other conventional military means of committing atrocities against civilian non-combatants. At the same time, the United States should accelerate efforts to vet, train, and arm moderate elements of Syria’s armed opposition, with the goal of empowering them to prevail against both the Assad regime and the growing presence of Al Qaeda-affiliated and other extremist rebel factions in the country."

Here are the less than distinguished names that signed the list. When is Joe Lieberman are Bill Kristol ever wrong on foreign policy?

Ammar Abdulhamid

Elliott Abrams

Dr. Fouad Ajami

Dr. Michael Auslin

Gary Bauer

Paul Berman

Max Boot

Ellen Bork

Ambassador L. Paul Bremer

Matthew R. J. Brodsky

Dr. Eliot A. Cohen

Senator Norm Coleman

Ambassador William Courtney

Seth Cropsey

James S. Denton

Paula A. DeSutter

Larry Diamond

Dr. Paula J. Dobriansky

Thomas Donnelly

Dr. Michael Doran

Mark Dubowitz

Dr. Colin Dueck

Dr. Nicholas Eberstadt

Ambassador Eric S. Edelman

Reuel Marc Gerecht

Abe Greenwald

Christopher J. Griffin

John P. Hannah

Bruce Pitcairn Jackson

Ash Jain

Dr. Kenneth Jensen

Allison Johnson

Dr. Robert G. Joseph

Dr. Robert Kagan

Lawrence F. Kaplan

Jamie Kirchick

Irina Krasovskaya

Dr. William Kristol

Bernard-Henri Levy

Dr. Robert J. Lieber

Senator Joseph I. Lieberman

Tod Lindberg

Dr. Thomas G. Mahnken

Dr. Michael Makovsky

Ann Marlowe

Dr. Clifford D. May

Dr. Alan Mendoza

Dr. Joshua Muravchik

Governor Tim Pawlenty

Martin Peretz

Danielle Pletka

Dr. David Pollock

Arch Puddington

Karl Rove

Randy Scheunemann

Dan Senor

Ambassador John Shattuck

Lee Smith

Henry D. Sokolski

Quote of the Day

"If President Bush copied Julius Caesar by ordering his army to empty Iraq of Arabs and repopulate the country with Americans, he would achieve immediate results: popularity with his military; enrichment of America by converting Arabian Iraq with American Iraq (therefore turning it from a liability to an asset); and boost American prestiege while terrifying American enemies.

"He could then follow Caesar's example and use his newfound popularity with the military to wield military power to become the first permanent president of America, and end the civil chaos caused by the continually squabbling Congress and out-of-control Supreme Court."

Phillip Atkinson

Atkinson penned this punditry masterpiece in 2007. The op-ed appeared on Family Security Matters. The web site is run by the Center For Security Policy. The CSP is technically a think tank. In reality, it promotes conspiracy theories about Shariah law taking over America.

Atkinson fails to note the Julius Caesar was assassinated for being dictorial. The rest of the world already fears America's military might. Other country would more likely make alliances to keep America in check. The last thing the NATO countries would do is sing praises for commit genocide and stealing Iraq's oil. Both of which are illegal under international law.

You may write off the CSP as a fringe group. How many fringe groups have Beltway insiders Elliott Abrams, Richard Perle, Doug Feith and Jack Dyer Crouch, II and Dick Cheney as members? CSP is a reflection of the insanity that is Republican foreign policy.

Marco Rubio Compared to Bush

Marco Rubio won praise for his speech to the Republican Jewish Coalition. Jennifer Rubin of the neoconservative Bible Commentary compared Rubio to another foreign policy thinker neoconservatives hold dear.

It is frankly the best speech on Israel since George W. Bush went to the Kresset.

High praise indeed. That should go well with Rubio's Dick Cheney endorsement.

Joel Award: Fred Barnes

It is time to give out the Joel Award. The award goes any celebrity, pundit, blogger or politician that purposely contradicts himself or herself.

The speed at which Fred Barnes contradicts himself on Fox News is amazing.

And then when you see, you know Obama has used — the most pathetic thing is to say, gee, well, we were involved in 1953 — 1953! This is an extremely young society. You think those demonstrators are thinking, well, we hope the U.S. stays out because they were involved in 1953? That's total nonsense.

Barnes then declares inside knowledge to the collective memories of the Iranian people.

POWERS: I think there is a history there.

BARNES: 1953?

POWERS: They do remember the United States meddling.

BARNES: No, they don't.

Barnes doesn't seem to have a problem remembering 1953 Iranian coup d’état engineered by the CIA on President Eisenhower's orders. The Democratically elected Prime Minister Mohammed Mosaddeq. The Prime Minister nationalize Iran's oil industry. The British wanted the oil and unsuccessful attempting to overthrow Mosaddeq. The British imposed an embargo.

The Shah and Mosaddeq had a fallout over the contol of the military. Mosaddeq resigned and protesters took to the streets. Three days later Mosaddeq would be back in office.

The West interfering with Iran's oil revenue and political process. Barnes is a fool if he believes Irans won't remember their own country's history.

Conservative columnist George Will explains how short sighted the neoconservative criticism President Obama is.

WILL: The president is being roundly criticized for insufficient, rhetorical support for what’s going on over there. It seems to me foolish criticism. The people on the streets know full well what the American attitude toward the regime is. And they don’t need that reinforced.

Great Moments In Conservative Punditry: Instapundit Edition

Only Glenn Reynolds would find this interesting enough to post.

ESQUIRE INTERVIEWS White Supremacists for Obama. Plus, one black separatist for McCain!

I didn't read the Esquire article because I'm not fascinated about which candidate racists will vote for. Reynolds is and I find that weird. I'm not someone that blogrolls and regularly links to hatemongering Little Green Footballs.

Reynolds states the United States should adopt a "more rubble, less trouble" Middle East policy, if the countries don't adopt the neoconservative version of democracy. Translation: bend to imperialism or die.

On the other hand, it's also true that if democracy can't work in Iraq, then we should probably adopt a "more rubble, less trouble" approach to other countries in the region that threaten us. If a comparatively wealthy and secular Arab country can't make it as a democratic republic, then what hope is there for places that are less wealthy, or less secular?

Reynolds is either a racist or openly condones genocide. Take your pick.

The Neocon Damage

Esquire has a must-read piece about Bush administration Middle East experts Flynt Leverett and Hillary Mann efforts to engage Iran. Both were able to get Iranian leaders to talk about opening up relations with the United States. They were defeated at every turn by the administration's neocons. Stephen Hadley outlined a policy that is designed to make Iran not come to the negotiating table.

After the meeting, Hadley wrote up a brief memo that came to be known as Hadley's Rules:

If a state like Syria or Iran offers specific assistance, we will take it without offering anything in return. We will accept it without strings or promises. We won't try to build on it.

It gets worse. Hadley killed Colin Powell's attempts for peace in Israel.

Then the phone rang. It was Stephen Hadley on the phone from the White House. "Tell Powell he is not authorized to talk about a political horizon," he said. "Those are formal instructions."

"This is a bad idea," Leverett remembers saying. "It's bad policy and it's also humiliating for Powell, who has been talking to heads of state about this very issue for the last ten days."

"It doesn't matter," Hadley said. "There's too much resistance from Rumsfeld and the VP. Those are the instructions."

So Leverett went back into the suite and asked Powell to step aside.

Powell was furious, Leverett remembers. "What is it they're afraid of?" he demanded. "Who the hell are they afraid of?"

"I don't know sir," Leverett said.

The road map temporarily got back on track when Crown Prince Abdullah challenged Bush in an amazing exchange.

In the spring, Crown Prince Abdullah flew to Texas to meet Bush at his ranch. The way Leverett remembers the story, Abdullah sat down and told Bush he was going to ask a direct question and wanted a direct answer. Are you going to do anything about the Palestinian issue? If you tell me no, if it's too difficult, if you're not going to give it that kind of priority, just tell me. I will understand and I will never say anything critical of you or your leadership in public, but I'm going to need to make my own judgments and my own decisions about Saudi interests.

Bush tried to stall, saying he understood his concerns and would see what he could do.

Abdullah stood up. "That's it. This meeting is over."

One thing the Bush administration doesn't do is blow off Saudia Arabia. The White House would later scrap the road map plan because Ariel Sharon didn't want to hurt the Likud Party's election prospects.

Rice sat impassively behind her broad desk. "If we put the road map out," she said, "it will interfere with Israeli elections."

"You are interfering with Israeli elections, just in another way."

"Flynt, the decision has already been made," Rice said.

Read the whole article. It's a fascinating study on how the neoconservatives have hurt American foreign policy. The next president will spend his or her time trying to clean up the mess.

The Right Goes After Harry Reid

The Right is going after Harry Reid for saying the Iraq war is loss. Bill Kristol is going after Reid's scalp on Fox News

Kristol: What Harry Reid said is much more disgraceful than anything Trent Lott said, and I do think Democrats should ask Harry Reid to step down.

Juan Williams: Brit [Hume] says it’s ‘laughable,’ you say it’s a ‘disgrace.’ I think what he said is the truth. I mean, it’s unavoidable,” Williams said. “Most Americans think we should have never gone in there, so he’s speaking in a voice that represents the majority of the American people.

Brad Delong laid out the 4 planks of the neoconservative movement.

That the Soviet Union was winning the Cold War, which the west needed to heat up and wage it with harsher methods--nuclear weapons, aircraft carriers, and death squads rather than limp-wristed Carter-Ford focus on international economic prosperity, democratization, and human rights.

That Likud should be encouraged to drive Palestinians into their existing homeland of Jordan as soon as practicable.

That taxes should be cut, (military) spending raised, and budgets balanced--and that anyone who pointed out that this didn't add up needed to be shouted down.

And:

That African-Americans got too easy a ride in modern America, and needed to be made poorer and less powerful.

Bill Kristol should stay away from the Trent Lott comparisons. Why are people still listening to what he has to say about Iraq? He has been wrong for so long. It's amazing the news talk shows will allow him to continue to come on.

Reid fired back at the attacks from the White House.

In his remarks, Reid criticized Bush and called Vice President Dick Cheney the president's "chief attack dog," lacking in credibility.

He likened the president to Lyndon Johnson, saying the former president ordered troop escalations in Vietnam in an attempt "to save his political legacy," only to watch U.S. casualties climb steadily.

Bush, he said, "is the only person who fails to face this war's reality — and that failure is devastating not just for Iraq's future, but for ours."

The Lyndon Johnson comparison is apt. Bush is putting his selfish needs over that of America.