# A Neo-Con Repents **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [November 4, 2006, 7:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-neo-con-repents/379112 "2006-11-04T19:59:13Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![Loopydude](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/e56c9b/32.png) [@Loopydude](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Loopydude)\ **Post date:** [November 5, 2006, 4:48am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-neo-con-repents/379112/21 "2006-11-05T04:48:44Z")
I like “smig”! It’s just a neologism waiting for a definition! ---
**Author:** ![tomndebb](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/b9e5f3/32.png) [@tomndebb](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/tomndebb)\ **Post date:** [November 5, 2006, 4:53am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-neo-con-repents/379112/22 "2006-11-05T04:53:36Z")
[QUOTE=Loopydude] I like “smig”! It’s just a neologism waiting for a definition! [/QUOTE] Smug prig. ---
**Author:** ![Loopydude](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/e56c9b/32.png) [@Loopydude](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Loopydude)\ **Post date:** [November 5, 2006, 4:59am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-neo-con-repents/379112/23 "2006-11-05T04:59:34Z")
Excellent! He is indeed smig! ---
**Author:** ![David\_Simmons](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/9de053/32.png) [@David\_Simmons](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/David_Simmons)\ **Post date:** [November 5, 2006, 4:59am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-neo-con-repents/379112/24 "2006-11-05T04:59:42Z")
[QUOTE=tomndebb] Smug prig. [/QUOTE] Excellent. ---
**Author:** ![RTFirefly](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/c77e96/32.png) [@RTFirefly](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RTFirefly)\ **Post date:** [November 5, 2006, 10:47am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-neo-con-repents/379112/25 "2006-11-05T10:47:26Z")
[QUOTE=Jonathan Chance] Wow, is that one astonishing amount of blame-shifting and backpeddling. All in one conventient article. I find it interesting that they seem to be blaming the administration when I see the largest flaw being inside the neo-con movement in general. [/quote] There’s more than enough blame for both camps, and their rather substantial overlap. Which brings me to Perle: > [@](#): > > Richard Perle: “Huge mistakes were made, and I want to be very clear on this: They were not made by neoconservatives, who had almost no voice in what happened, and certainly almost no voice in what happened after the downfall of the regime in Baghdad. I’m getting damn tired of being described as an architect of the war. I was in favor of bringing down Saddam. Nobody said, ‘Go design the campaign to do that.’ I had no responsibility for that.” As [Kevin Drum adroitly responds](http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/archives/individual/2006_11/010006.php): > [@](#): > > It’s worth saying very plainly what’s going on here: the neocons are using these interviews to make the case that neoconservatism is in no way to blame for the disaster in Iraq. If they had been in charge things would have been different. > > This baby needs to be strangled in its crib. [The 1997 “Statement of Principles” of the Project for a New American Century](http://www.newamericancentury.org/statementofprinciples.htm), the neocon Bible, was signed by, among others, Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, Paul Wolfowitz, Zalmay Khalilzad, Scooter Libby, and Elliot Abrams. All of these men were deeply involved in the formulation, planning, and execution of the Iraq war. The neocon creed was part and parcel of every move they made. Also, Perle himself was Chair of the [Defense Policy Board](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Defense_Policy_Board_Advisory_Committee) from 2001 to 2003, and while that was an advisory rather than a policy role, he most certainly had the ear of the policymakers during that time. ---
**Author:** ![RTFirefly](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/c77e96/32.png) [@RTFirefly](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RTFirefly)\ **Post date:** [November 5, 2006, 10:58am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-neo-con-repents/379112/26 "2006-11-05T10:58:53Z")
Kevin Drum has fun with David Frum: > [@](#): > > David Frum: “I always believed as a speechwriter that if you could persuade the president to commit himself to certain words, he would feel himself committed to the ideas that underlay those words. And the big shock to me has been that although the president said the words, he just did not absorb the ideas. And that is the root of, maybe, everything.” [Drum](http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/archives/individual/2006_11/010002.php): > [@](#): > > Shorter David Frum: I used to think Bush was such an empty vessel that if I could just get him to parrot the words I wrote, they’d bounce around in his skull and become actual ideas for lack of any competition. Later, though, I finally realized why his skull was empty of serious ideas in the first place. > > And, yes, this is the root of everything. I’d personally walk the root causes back one step further, to the fact that the big money boys who financed Bush’s Presidential runs thought it was a great idea to have an empty suit as President. But other than that, Kevin has Frum - and Bush - nailed. ---
**Author:** ![RTFirefly](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/c77e96/32.png) [@RTFirefly](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RTFirefly)\ **Post date:** [November 5, 2006, 11:11am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-neo-con-repents/379112/27 "2006-11-05T11:11:17Z")
Taking further advantage of early-a.m. insomnia to shoot more fish in the barrel: > [@](#): > > Richard Perle: “In the administration that I served [Perle was an assistant secretary of defense under Ronald Reagan], there was a one-sentence description of the decision-making process when consensus could not be reached among disputatious departments: ‘The president makes the decision.’ [Bush] did not make decisions, in part because the machinery of government that he nominally ran was actually running him. The National Security Council was not serving [Bush] properly. He regarded [then National-Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice] as part of the family.” It’s pretty clear in retrospect that Cheney and Rumsfeld - two of Perle’s neocon buddies - were running our Iraq strategy. Sure, the President deserves the responsibility for not being fully President, but that doesn’t get Perle’s team off the hook; it gets the hook more firmly embedded in them. > [@](#): > > Kenneth Adelman: “The most dispiriting and awful moment of the whole administration was the day that Bush gave the Presidential Medal of Freedom to [former C.I.A. director] George Tenet, General Tommy Franks, and [Coalition Provisional Authority chief] Jerry [Paul] 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.” That was _two years ago_, dude. I see you were in a big hurry to share. :rolleyes: ---
**Author:** ![Jonathan\_Chance](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jonathan_chance/32/701_2.png) [@Jonathan\_Chance](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jonathan_Chance)\ **Post date:** [November 5, 2006, 1:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-neo-con-repents/379112/28 "2006-11-05T13:04:45Z")
Insomnia? RT, I’m up before this EVERY DAY. Dogs, kids and pubs, man. It’s a recipe for lack-o-sleep. I understand your point about their being blame to spread around but for all of me when the root assumption is flawed can much blame really be assigned to those attempting to carry out the plan? ---
**Author:** ![jjimm](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/ba8739/32.png) [@jjimm](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jjimm)\ **Post date:** [November 5, 2006, 1:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-neo-con-repents/379112/29 "2006-11-05T13:23:49Z")
Perle was interviewed on BBC radio yesterday. In precis he said “my words were accurately quoted, but editorial around them was inaccurate”. Interesting that the [PNAC Iraq page](http://www.newamericancentury.org/iraqmiddleeast.htm) hasn’t been updated for more than a year. ---
**Author:** ![hawthorne](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/c89c15/32.png) [@hawthorne](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/hawthorne)\ **Post date:** [November 5, 2006, 1:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-neo-con-repents/379112/30 "2006-11-05T13:54:57Z")
The David Frum quote is really quite shocking, even given how things have gone. He thinks _that_ is arse-covering? Scary, scary stuff. ---
**Author:** ![gonzomax](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/e8c25b/32.png) [@gonzomax](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/gonzomax)\ **Post date:** [November 5, 2006, 2:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-neo-con-repents/379112/31 "2006-11-05T14:17:33Z")
President didnt pull the decisions out of his ass. He received info from his people which was false. They denied cherry picking the intelligence to support actions they were mentally committed to.Time has proven many in the CIA told them they were wrong. It was the neocon plan in action. Why the hell does Chalabi have ant access at all. What a lying self aggrandizing prick he is. HE should have zero credibility by now. ---
**Author:** ![David\_Simmons](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/9de053/32.png) [@David\_Simmons](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/David_Simmons)\ **Post date:** [November 5, 2006, 2:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-neo-con-repents/379112/32 "2006-11-05T14:45:38Z")
[QUOTE=tomndebb] Gee, I made a mistake, but that was because my info was bad. The President is responisble, of course, but he was “betrayed” by bad info and decisions from his staff. [/QUOTE] There’s something fishy about Perle’s position. It would seem, from the cited story, that he says that going to war was a mistake. However, if it had been better planned and executed it would have worked anyway. So does he mean that even a bad idea is OK when it gains its ends because of good planning and execution? ---
**Author:** ![Jim\_s\_Son](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/e19adc/32.png) [@Jim\_s\_Son](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jim_s_Son)\ **Post date:** [November 5, 2006, 3:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-neo-con-repents/379112/33 "2006-11-05T15:04:13Z")
There is a symposium on [nationalreview.com](http://nationalreview.com) where David Frum, Richard Perle, Michael Ledden and Michael Rubin discuss how “Vanity Fair” twisted their words. Like so many left wingers, “Vanity Fair” is upset a psychopathic mass murderer who had Weapons of Mass Destruction and supportedc terrorists has been removed and a democracy installed. So naturally “Vanity Fair” would lie and twist staements…it is what leftwingers do everyday. They pine over the mass murderers and filth the world has produced: Lenin, Stalin, Castro, Mao Tse-Tung, Arafat, Amin when they are not ridiculing the brave people who remove such slime. ---
**Author:** ![Captain\_Amazing](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/6de8d8/32.png) [@Captain\_Amazing](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Captain_Amazing)\ **Post date:** [November 5, 2006, 4:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-neo-con-repents/379112/34 "2006-11-05T16:38:35Z")
[QUOTE=RTFirefly] It’s pretty clear in retrospect that Cheney and Rumsfeld - two of Perle’s neocon buddies - were running our Iraq strategy. [/QUOTE] Cheney and Rumsfeld weren’t and aren’t neocons. They’re businessmen and foreign policy realists. Yea, the Iraq war hasn’t turned out well. That doesn’t mean that overthrowing Sadaam and trying to set up a democratic government in Iraq was a bad itdea. It just means that the administration, including its neocon members, should have had a better plan. They should have had plans for what to do after Baghdad fell, they should have put more troops and money in (troops to close the borders, provide security and stop looting and rioting, money to begin reconstruction of the infrastructure), and they should have both realized and convinced the American people that we would have to have troops in Iraq for a while, up to ten years after the war. The administration didn’t do any of that, and they’re paying for it now, as, unfortunately, ar e US soldiers and the Iraqi people. ---
**Author:** ![EddyTeddyFreddy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/eddyteddyfreddy/32/18796_2.png) [@EddyTeddyFreddy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/EddyTeddyFreddy)\ **Post date:** [November 5, 2006, 4:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-neo-con-repents/379112/35 "2006-11-05T16:42:46Z")
It’s not the fault of the neocons, or any of those fine, keen-minded, brilliant strategist guys that Iraq has all gone to hell. No, no – it’s [those dumb broads around the President:](http://www.vanityfair.com/politics/features/2006/12/neocons200612?printable=true¤tPage=all) > [@](#): > > Michael Ledeen, American Enterprise Institute freedom scholar: “Ask yourself who the most powerful people in the White House are. They are women who are in love with the president: Laura [Bush], Condi, Harriet Miers, and Karen Hughes.” ---
**Author:** ![ElvisL1ves](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/5daacb/32.png) [@ElvisL1ves](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ElvisL1ves)\ **Post date:** [November 5, 2006, 4:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-neo-con-repents/379112/36 "2006-11-05T16:49:39Z")
[QUOTE=Jim’s Son] Like so many left wingers, “Vanity Fair” is upset a psychopathic mass murderer who had Weapons of Mass Destruction and supportedc terrorists has been removed and a democracy installed. [/quote] We’ll spot you “mass murderer”. Where did you get the other stuff from? > [@](#): > > would lie and twist staements..it is what leftwingers do everyday. Damn the facts, full speed ahead! ---
**Author:** ![GIGObuster](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gigobuster/32/421_2.png) [@GIGObuster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GIGObuster)\ **Post date:** [November 5, 2006, 5:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-neo-con-repents/379112/37 "2006-11-05T17:03:57Z")
[QUOTE=Jim’s Son] There is a symposium on [nationalreview.com](http://nationalreview.com) where David Frum, Richard Perle, Michael Ledden and Michael Rubin discuss how “Vanity Fair” twisted their words. Like so many left wingers, “Vanity Fair” is upset a psychopathic mass murderer who had Weapons of Mass Destruction and supportedc terrorists has been removed and a democracy installed. [/quote] We need a cite where Vanity Fair said they are upset for that reason. > [@](#): > > So naturally “Vanity Fair” would lie and twist staements..it is what leftwingers do everyday. Nope, if no cite is produced then it naturally follows that it is you who is lying. > [@](#): > > They pine over the mass murderers and filth the world has produced: Lenin, Stalin, Castro, Mao Tse-Tung, Arafat, Amin when they are not ridiculing the brave people who remove such slime. 2 lies in a row. there are some extremists that do that, but like in my case and many others we have ridiculed all those dictators before. The reason why there is ridicule for the removers of the current Saddam slime is that the removers [lied to the American people to get into Iraq and equated Iraq with the war against terror](http://www.downingstreetmemo.com/) and showed incompetence in securing the place. ---
**Author:** ![furt](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/439d5e/32.png) [@furt](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/furt)\ **Post date:** [November 5, 2006, 5:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-neo-con-repents/379112/38 "2006-11-05T17:07:38Z")
[http://article.nationalreview.com/?q=MzgxYzUzYmRlNjhmNzMyNjI2MDM4YmRjNTFhODA4MGQ=](http://article.nationalreview.com/?q=MzgxYzUzYmRlNjhmNzMyNjI2MDM4YmRjNTFhODA4MGQ=) [QUOTE=Perle] Vanity Fair has rushed to publish a few sound bites from a lengthy discussion with David Rose. Concerned that anything I might say could be used to influence the public debate on Iraq just prior to Tuesday’s election, I had been promised that my remarks would not be published before the election. I should have known better than to trust the editors at Vanity Fair who lied to me and to others who spoke with Mr. Rose. Moreover, in condensing and characterizing my views for their own partisan political purposes, they have distorted my opinion about the situation in Iraq and what I believe to be in the best interest of our country. [/QUOTE] [QUOTE=Frum] My most fundamental views on the war in Iraq remain as they were in 2003: The war was right, victory is essential, and defeat would be calamitous. And that to my knowledge is the view of everybody quoted in the release and the piece: Adelman, Cohen, Ledeen, Perle, Pletka, Rubin, and all the others. [/QUOTE] ---
**Author:** ![GIGObuster](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gigobuster/32/421_2.png) [@GIGObuster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GIGObuster)\ **Post date:** [November 5, 2006, 5:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-neo-con-repents/379112/39 "2006-11-05T17:28:18Z")
[QUOTE=furt] [http://article.nationalreview.com/?q=MzgxYzUzYmRlNjhmNzMyNjI2MDM4YmRjNTFhODA4MGQ=](http://article.nationalreview.com/?q=MzgxYzUzYmRlNjhmNzMyNjI2MDM4YmRjNTFhODA4MGQ=) [/QUOTE] The impression I get is that of the kid getting caught with their hands in the cookie jar, of course they have concerns about the mistakes being made on the war! But Vanity Fair lied to us when they said this was not going to be published before the elections! Some defense. In any case it is not unexpected, many already got the feeling these neocons were not repenting and I do think it is very good for all to see that these guys are still denying there were no weapons of mass destruction or everything was hunky dory on the way to war or that the current Iraqi allies are independent from the US. IOW if they think this helps their cause they have another thing coming. ---
**Author:** ![BJMoose](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/5fc32e/32.png) [@BJMoose](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BJMoose)\ **Post date:** [November 5, 2006, 6:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-neo-con-repents/379112/40 "2006-11-05T18:26:31Z")
And in related news . . . In 1999 the US did some war gaming vis-a-vis Iraq and determined that it would take 400,00 troops to keep order in Iraq after the conquest. And even _that_ might not be enough manpower. Not, of course, that the present administration has ever had the slightest inclination to look to the preceeding admin for suggestions. FWIW, I used “Repents” in the title of this thread in the broader sense of “changes his mind”. Technically correct, but the actual _Vanity Fair_ piece makes it clear Perle is wallowing in hindsight. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-neo-con-repents/379112.md?page=1) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-neo-con-repents/379112.md?page=3)