Very interesting. Kristol was on Newshour this evening as well regurgitating the same get-ever-tougher flotsom Juan Williams slapped him for on Fox.

I'm curious to see if we can stay out of the neocon's WWIII long enough for a real force to oppose them and I'm sad to think it may have to come from genuinely conservative Republicans.

South by Southwest
The current Middle East tragedy we see unfolding before our eyes is, obviously, one that ever more journalists will not be able to cover with cool dispatch, thank goodness. Also, it is unsettling to learn of the neocons' view of how the current out-of-control events in the region could be advantageous to their cause.
War is so easy. And there is plenty of blame to go around: Is the infrastructure of struggling Lebanon so meaningless that it needs to be destroyed? Are the lives of innocent civilians in Israel and Lebanon just "collateral damage?" If Israel has miscalculated by over-reacting, will they be drawn into something from which it will be difficult to extricate themselves? Will Hezbollah so discredited themselves that they will forever leave their experiment with community services and politics? Will the U.S. again be as late and ineffectual at rescue as with Hurricane Katrina? Another chartered cruise ship?!

Israel Lobby Watch

Excellent! I am feeling better already having just endured Kristol's Israel Lobby rant on the NewsHour.  Thank God for David Ignatius.

What's happening in Israel is in no small measure a product of desperate people in very desperate straits.

 Yes we're talking IraQ, IraN, the TaepOdong nonsense and the 2006 elections. The War Party is desperate. This is their October surprise, this the time for fighting words if ever there was one.

Too "Inside the Beltway" for me to be interested.

I stopped reading the Weekly Standard after it kept putting up progressively more farfetched and more ridiculous "Able Danger" stories on its website.

The "Able Danger" nonsense was proof enough for me that the folks at the Weekly Standard will go along with even the cheesiest and dumbest low-rent propaganda stunts just to get a bad word in about the Clinton administration.

I don't "get" George Will. His columns are a big yawn and he comes across as a pompous jerk with an undeserved elitist attitude on television.

Israel Lobby Watch
Awesome...but reflecting on Joe Biden's performance yesterday on, back to the dumps...

Listening to Newt Gingrich bloviate on Meet the Press, advocating U.S. intervention on Israel's behalf against Syria and Iran – and the pathetic Joe "Me Too" Biden effectively agreeing with him – one can only wonder how or why anybody listens to these crazies. As Newt, the megalomaniacal has-been, gleefully declares that "World War III" is in progress, and weaves a conspiracy theory linking Iran, Syria, North Korea, Hezbollah, and – believe it or not! – Venezuela, old Joe just sits there nodding out. Given a chance to reply, his only objection to Gingrich's vision of war on all fronts is that, yes, we need to go to war, but we have to do it with the support of our allies. "Fighting Joe" Biden is no weenie: his voice hardens as he avers we should tell the North Koreans that we have the capacity to "annihilate" them. Gingrich smiles.

He has good reason to smile. Aside from his fondness for the concept of annihilation, he knows that the War Party's "liberal" Democratic wing is falling into line. The Israeli invasion of Lebanon – which many predict will include the de facto annexation of a southern "buffer zone" – has the fulsome support of both parties. When the Israelis tell the Americans to jump, the only question Biden and the Democratic party leadership have is: How high?

Will We Go to War for Israel?:

 

 

Then there's John McCain whose never met a war he didn't like (compensating for sitting his out???)...our National Leadership is in the grips of a dying but desperate War Party..

The very worst of all possible worlds

What part of Will's statement here:

"And perhaps because containment, although of uncertain success, did work against Stalin and his successors, and might be preferable to a war against a nation much larger and more formidable than Iraq."

didn't you grasp?

Not that I'm speaking for Will, since I don't read his stuff. But this statement does not indicate that Will is in any way in favor of the neocon plan for Iran.

Perhaps he believes Iran does have a nuclear weapons program, but he doesn't seem to be supporting the neocon concept.

More importantly, the article's attacks on the neocons seems to come at a time when the neocon and Israeli agenda CLEARLY is to stimulate a war on Syria and Iran. That was precisely the neocon blather Will was quoting.

I have no idea what Will might want to do but before posting I went back to some of Wills columns and read them. He is clearly more concerned about Iran and North Korea than he was ever about Iraq. Will is also more like Fukyama is now skeptical about the ability to transform societies, at least on the cheap. Whereas the neo-Cons clearly believe their rhetoric about societal transformation. It is one of the biggest differences between the neo-Cons and the actual leaders of this country Bush Cheney and Rumsfeld. It would not surprise me if Will is mor a supporter of Cheney and Rumsfeld.

Daniel A. Greenbaum

I don't "get" George Will. His columns are a big yawn and he comes across as a pompous jerk with an undeserved elitist attitude on television.

Then what does that say about Kristol? Now there's a real whack-job "fancy-pants" if one ever walked the face of God's green earth. They oughta require that wag and his pillow-biting buddy Doug Feith to suit up, move 'em out and place them at the tip of the spear of this here "WAR PARTY" if he wishes the US to take out Iran. Those two have been near the top of the Admiral's list for round-up by the Shore Patrol for a trip to the brig aboard the USS Lolliepop for the last four years.

Come on Kristol, how 'bout you and Dougie dearest lead us all to salvation and the promise land. But as usual I have digressed.

Now ... about George Will, he IS a self-proclaimed expert on baseball... So he must know a little about something on everything that works out to be about nothing.

~OGD~

You may well be right about that last. But the point of the post is that Will is down on the neocons.

While Will may be skeptical about the ability to transform societies, and neocons aren't - and that isn't certain, since neocons like to lie about their motivations and real justifications for their actions - clearly Bush, Cheney and Rumsfeld seem to still go along with the neocons, even if they personally may not be neocons. I find it hard to distinguish between Cheney, who appears to be just a crook and a power seeker, and the neocons, who appear to be ideologically motivated crooks and power seekers. Since they all seem to be on the same road together, distinguishing the two isn't useful unless there is some sort of leverage to be gained.

Justin Raimondo quotes Dan Rather saying something to the effect that the road is littered with the corpses of people who underestimated Dick Cheney's influence on Bush and points out that if Condi Rice was involved in Bush's "diplomacy" effort on Iran - if there ever truly was one - Cheney and the neocons are back in the saddle now.

This also contradicts Ivo Daalder's recent assertions to me about that as well. Raimondo points out that Israel has cut that stuff off at the knees by unilaterally widening the ME war.

I'm with you. One thinks that bowtie will eventually cut off the remaining oxygen to his brain as it's evident it has already done significant damage.

And to think George Will is one of the more moderate members of the beltway Kool Kids Klub!

Regardless of what George Will now says we need to keep in mind he's been much more than an "enabler" for these nuts now running our country and dominating our beltway media discourse.

When Juan Williams becomes the voice of reason you know we're in some deep s**t in DC.

I am really surprised that none of the posters have noted perhaps the greatest significance of the Will attack. Now, maybe, with this type of "cover" some of our courageous Democrats may be willing to speak out more forcefully. Maybe....nah.

It says they are Presidential material.

____________________________________________________________

“I, ..., do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic..."

the greatest significance of the Will attack. Now, maybe, with this type of "cover" some of our courageous Democrats may be willing to speak out more forcefully. Maybe....nah.

I really see this differently in terms of 'greatest significance'.  I do not beleive it is a democratic vs. GOP issue in terms of Will speaking out. Rather, this is a inter-party fight over listening to the neo-cons in terms how our foreign policy will be driven.

But as Transhuman noted, it matters not the difference between neo-cons vs. oil backers driving the ME war unless there is something to leverage.  This war in the ME, is two pronged, there is the allies of Israel and the bigger 'geopolitical oil control' dominant thinking on USA policy.

Israel is a tactic and support of them is a by product of the much larger goal and strategy to control oil so that we can have some leverage with our bankers, China and Japan.

That's the issue which  Clinton told us about during his 2004 DNC speech.

Yes, but if it is not lack of cover that prevents "our" Democrats from speaking out forcefully on Iraq, what is it? Is it diffidence, modesty, decorum, or do they feel like Lieberman that the war is just and proper and going swimmingly?

Yes, but if it is not lack of cover that prevents "our" Democrats from speaking out forcefully on Iraq, what is it? Is it diffidence, modesty, decorum, or do they feel like Lieberman that the war is just and proper and going swimmingly?

I am not certain. But I would tend to think they have nothing to gain politically by doing so. AIPAC is too powerful.

Israel Lobby Watch

US/Israelite Destruction of Lebanon Continues [Juan Cole's Informed Comment

These attrocities are the work of desperate criminals whose time is running out. Unfortunately, the wounded tiger is the most deadly ..Israel is running out of time both for its 60 year ethnic cleansing campaign and most critically on its blank check from its puppet Bush...

Billy Kristol at the Weekly Standard is now certifiable calling for another two wars - Iran and Syria and for this, receives a righteous shellacking from George Will in the WaPo today.Transformations Toll

7For they sow the wind, and they shall reap the whirlwind. The standing grain has no heads, it shall yield no meal; if it were to yield, foreigners would devour it. 8Israel is swallowed up; now they are among the nations as a useless vessel 

Hosea 8

 

What I am watching in Lebanon each day is an outrage By Robert Fisk in Mdeirej, Central Lebanon

Will’s goal, as always, is to defend the Coalition of the George F. Willing. By this, I mean Will is engaged in a pursuit that has become very obvious since practically no sane, remotely honest person can plausibly claim W and his gang of neocompoops hasn’t run the US train off the tracks. Will’s tack is a diversion designed to defend “conservatism” against “fake” (neo) conservatives. Things fall apart, goes this worldview, because we wander from the true path of genuine conservatism. The grandiose failures of Bush, the neo-cons, etc. are not failures of conservatism, they argue. Doom is visited upon our nation as a punishment for straying from the true path.

It’s all obviously a set-up for the November mid-terms: Vote Republican and give the party a chance to implement true conservatism. The party (meaning Will) has learned the error of its ways fiscally and abroad. Neocons and liberals, with their interventionism and pie-in-the-sky visions of largescale transformation, are really the same thing and lead us toward the same problems. Forget the fact that so many liberals opposed the Iraq War. Will has to denounce the neocons in order to create the logic of his final push for the GOP, and “true” conservatism, going into November.

Pay no attention to the man behind that curtain! He’s a desperate fraud, made even more pathetic by his growing irrelevence as a commentator. Oh. did someone mention Will checking into the ER? It was for the war wound he got when Toto bit him on the ass.
Pantheon

OGD,

My eyes glazed over just reading the table of contents and the first couple of pages of George Will's s book about baseball. Talk about tedious - "Still, dissect any game, even that one, deeply enough and you will reveal layers of asymmetries."

LOL - "Oh no, Mr. Bill, please don't make me read George Will again".

Blow jobs, baseball and terrorist attacks are all of equal gravity in George Will's world.

It must have been the pompous little prick's up at bat when he bashed Clinton in a January 1999 column.

George Will, Washington Post, 1/21/99

"I regret that what began as a friendship came to include this conduct." -- President Clinton, Aug. 17, 1998

"Such is Bill Clinton's fecundity as a liar, there still are darkly illuminating lies that are just now being scrutinized for the first time, even by people who have been attentive to this scandal. Consider the lie printed above.

Like Poe's purloined letter, Clinton's lie has been in plain view. For five months. And it was neither a slip of the tongue nor a flustered response to an unexpected question. It was a carefully written part of a crafty script, coldly calculated and finely calibrated. It was in the written statement he read to the grand jury when he was asked the first question about his relationship with Monica Lewinsky.

But this relationship that supposedly "began" as a friendship actually became something else very quickly. The "conduct" that included oral sex (and e-mail describing the effect of chewing Altoids before performing oral sex) began the very day in 1995 that Clinton first met Lewinsky. As Rep. James Rogan said to the Senate, within hours after Clinton met and spoke with Lewinsky for the first time, "he invited her back to the Oval Office to perform sex acts on him." Lewinsky has testified that even a month later, a month into both the "friendship" and "this conduct," she was still doubtful that Clinton even knew her name.."

Read what the pompous little prick had the balls to say on 9/12/01.

George Will, Washington Post, 9/12/2001

"Just at the moment when American political debate had reached a nadir of frivolousness, with wrangling about nonexistent "lockboxes" and the like, the nation's decade-long holiday from history came to a shattering end. After about a half-century of war and Cold War, Americans came to feel, understandably, that the world was too much with them, and they turned away from it. What happened Tuesday morning, and can happen again, underscored the abnormality of the decade..."

Hello, you pompous little prick - you were the one who made the American political debate frivoulous for a decade. Speak for yourself, prick - maybe you took a holiday from history in the '90s but I sure didn't.

On 9/12/01, George Will told everyone why he is a world-class asshole and why he should be fired. George Will is one of the reasons why no one wants to pay for a newspaper anymore.

Re Bill Kristol - The other day, I read that Project For the New American Century was being dismantled. I don't know if the PNAC website is staying up but get on over there and download all of PNAC's reports if you want your copies for posterity.

If you haven't read the report, "Iraq : Setting the Record Straight", dated April 2005, I highly recommend it. "Whacked out" does not do the report justice.

LOL - In the report, the PNAC people claim that the Iraq mess is all Bill Clinton's fault because the conservatives believed every word Bill Clinton said about Iraq in the '90s.

Guys, listen to me - you simply cannot have it both ways. Either you firmly believe Bill Clinton really was a moral degenerate and a congenital liar or you were trying to overthrow the government for eight years.

What you cannot do, Mr. Kristol, is say that the conservatives got fooled in Iraq because they relied on a moral degenerate and a congenital liar to establish their own foreign policy.

Liberal alert! "Iraq: Setting the Record Straight" will be a collector's item. Get it now before it disappears from the internet.

By the way, is that really your name, or are you simply paying homage to Casablanca?

What am I missing...

 Not much. They are selling something that's easy to sell.  The ex-militarists in this country are a huge special interest group whose appetite for macho action talk is endless.

 The word "appeasement" has the same effect pornography has on teenagers to this crowd.

Secondly, the military industrial complex is the last employer that hasn't outsourced their work so who's to argue there.

Finally, the washington insider crowd never sacrifices a thing that isn't expendable to begin with.  A soldier's life is as valuable as a used toothpick to Kristol and his audience.

 The Rolling Stone writes about plans for a new draft. 

I should have read this letter first

S-i is here to steal ideas and attention.

You might call it a right-wing Attention Deficit Disorder. The dirty little secret in the world of politics is that right-wing talk no longer drives the agenda. Their mutual masturbation discussion groups have grown flacid and so refugees like self-interest are now looking for host discussion groups to get their intellectual strokes from.

Sadly, when they realize no one treats them like geniuses they were once thought to be get sour and pout.

Israel Lobby Watch

The Time for Fighting Words IS NOW

Israel Lobby Watch

Daniel Greenbaum and Jhaber may be fooled...don't let them fool you.

One war, one plan, one Israel Lobby

Practice to Deceive
Chaos in the Middle East is not the Bush hawks' nightmare scenario--it's their plan.
by Joshua Micah Marshall

• Rice: Cease-Fire Won't Help
• Military Leaders Foresee Iraq Exit in 2016

 Don't let them play you for fools - ever again

 We're being set up

Fox "News," CNN, and the rest of the Bush propaganda ministry are echoing the lie that innocent Israel is under attack from the "terrorist states" of Syria and Iran through their surrogate, Hezbollah. Americans, who are sick of the Iraq occupation and want the troops home, are being fooled again and set up for wider war in the Middle East.

Evangelical "Christians" are part of the propaganda show. Three thousand of them, under the lead of the Rev. John C. Hagee, are heading to Washington for a "Washington/Israel summit" to demand, needlessly, that the neocon Bush regime show "stronger support for Israel."

It is difficult to see how Bush could show any stronger support without using the U.S. military to assist Israel in its attacks, which is, of course, what the "Christian" Rev. Hagee intends when he declares: "There's a new Hitler in the Middle East [he doesn't mean Bush or Olmert]. The only way he will be stopped will be by a preemptive military strike in Iran."

Present at Rev. Hagee's "Washington/Israel Summit" will be Israel's former Minister of Defense, Lt. Gen. Moshe Ya'alon, Israeli Ambassador Daniel Ayalon, Republican National Committee Chairman Ken Mehlman, Republican Senators Sam Brownback and Rick Santorum, the Rev. Jerry Falwell, and Gary Bauer.

The American Israel Public Affairs Committee, the most powerful lobby in Washington, expressed its thanks to Rev. Hagee for demonstrating "the depth and breadth of American support" for Israel. Recently, AIPAC has been under investigation as a suspected nest for Israeli spies.

David Brog, former chief of staff for Republican Sen. Arlen Specter, has gone to work for Rev. Hagee. Brog, who is Jewish, says he works for Hagee's evangelical enterprise because "we're bringing into a pro-Israel camp millions of Christians who love Israel and giving them a political voice. Israel's enemies are our enemies, and this group instinctively understands that." Brog goes on to say that Hagee's evangelicals understand that they are not supposed to talk about Jesus, only about saving Israel: "Christians who work with Jews in supporting Israel realize how sensitive we are in talking about Jesus. They realize it will interfere with what they are trying to do."

Israel Lobby Watch

One plan, one war, too damned many lies Greenbaum

You couldn't be more wrong. :)

The only way to test one's ideas is to argue with opponents. Before coming to this site I posted to the Agonist for a year or so...and before that I read the liberal as well as conservative journals and argued on talk radio, and in various discussion groups.

My take is what I've said on other threads - partisans of all stripes are mostly mindless followers but liberals are worse because they're to dumb to realize that they must defend themselves.

You're a perfect example.

S-i is here to steal ideas...

Point to one. As far as I can remember I've treated every idea I've found here and commented on with utter contempt. Do you think I turn around and, in some other venue, argue its virtues?

...and attention

How do you steal attention on an internet chat-site you pathetic little fop? Who does it belong to?

You use up a lot of space to say nothing.

Daniel A. Greenbaum

but liberals are worse because they're to dumb to realize that they must defend themselves

Um, too dumb.  You can get back to your lecture professor know-it-all.

My, my, you use every trick in the book to get attention though.  All these silly inflammatory statements questioning the manhood of Liberals while you snivel away whenever confronted with an "utterly contemptible" idea your head can't handle.

 It all spells intellectual WIMP to me. 

I tried to tell you what it felt like to be a high-school and junior high-school bully, why we did it. You didn't understand.

But those impulses are basic. You'll never elimate them. In some societies they are discouraged, in others encouraged, in adulthood. But they're always there. You'll never elimate them.

Many people out there don't share you vision of a placid, middle-class utopia. They like conflict. They're good at it. They find it exciting, and they like its rewards.

Israel Lobby Watch

The plan now unfolding is in fact the plan whose partisans  George Will excoriates in the Washington Post today.

It is one plan of a piece with Kristol's defense of Israeli murder in Gaza and Lebanon; his call for more War on Iran and Syria and the war he and the Israel Lobby so vigorously championed in 2001-2003 - the War in Iraq which we are now told will last until 2016.

Ah what surprises Kristol and the Cabal have in store for us - beyond Olmert's gift wrapped Election Year Surprise!

But were they surprises???

Josh Marshall began to "get it" in May 2003 with his Practice to Deceive in the Washington Monthly.

But long before that, many of us "got it" and none better than Anatol Lieven, whose Ocotober 2002 article in the London Review of Books concludes presciently

Twice now in the past decade, the overwhelming military and economic dominance of the US has given it the chance to lead the rest of the world by example and consensus. It could have adopted (and to a very limited degree under Clinton did adopt) a strategy in which this dominance would be softened and legitimised by economic and ecological generosity and responsibility, by geopolitical restraint, and by 'a decent respect to the opinion of mankind', as the US Declaration of Independence has it. The first occasion was the collapse of the Soviet superpower enemy and of Communism as an ideology. The second was the threat displayed by al-Qaida. Both chances have been lost - the first in part, the second it seems conclusively. What we see now is the tragedy of a great country, with noble impulses, successful institutions, magnificent historical achievements and immense energies, which has become a menace to itself and to mankind.

The Push for WarAnatol Lieven considers what the US Administration hopes to gain

Now these fighting words may offend some around here.

Frankly I do not give a damn, and neither should anyone else.

from

I suggest to you that people who strive for Peace are not striving for a utopia on earth, they are advocating the daily hard-work of respecting the other even when the other may be an arrogant schmuck because in the short time we all have that schmuck is of no consequence to what I want my life to be like.

to

Go back to talk radio where sounding like a crazed homocidal lunatic is a middle-class utopian value...Woo Hoo, s-i thinks that being a juvenile delinquent is a permanent biological condition!...
Society has a remedy - prison.

It took a little longer than I thought but I knew we'd get there.

How are you going to make me go back anywhere? How are you going to force me to agree to your definition of criminality? How are you going to put me in prison if I violate your laws?
Do you really believe that the meek will inherit the earth, that the wimps of the world can unite and put all the tough guys in prison?

Israel Lobby Watch

Israel Lobby Watch

Actually the two quotes are compatible and apply to you perfectly. People like you are of no consequence to the civilized world.

I cannot count you as an arrogant schmuck because the smoke you blow up these pipes is too thick to decide whether you are juvenile or full-grown.

In any case, sending you back to your bullytown playground simply means you'll prefer that company better. When you learn to wipe yourself before barging into a discussion you'll feel even fresher.

As for something inheriting the earth, it will be coackroaches and I'm sure you'll be there to bear witness.

But I cannot believe anybody with a brain thinks Liberals believe the bullshit guys like you categorize us by. You are so predictably and safely retro. Do you even read or just come to smear the walls with your fecal preconceived opinion of us?

"nor for that matter by Kristol and Richard Perle."

Oh my God, talk about BIZARRE!

Perle is Jewish, so he gets exempted from being a neocon!

Not to mention William Kristol is supposedly not a neocon!

I quoted a piece from somebody, I forget who, in another thread, about Perle showing a slide at one point for what he thought was ideal US strategy in the Middle East - all of Palestinie was Israel, Jordan was Palestine, and Iraq was a Hashemite kingdom.

And this, according to you, is not related to the neocons at all.

And all thrown up just so you can accuse me of being "anti-Semitic" again.

Unbelievable.

This from a guy who's going to do the

daily hard-work of respecting the other

and all because I disagreed with and insulted you in an internet chat-room.

I imagine hard work to you is taking a dress from a rack and - if you feel particularly enegetic - simpering at the same time.

The latter - as Justin Raimondo repeatedly says, they're just the left wing of the War Party.

Really, the Democratic politicians deep down really admire the Republicans and the neocons for being the sort of tough, take-no-prisoners statists THEY would like to be - but can't be because their version of the lies requires them to suck up to the "poor and the downtrodden".

It's the difference between being a "militant" Islamist and being a "peace-loving" Christian. Both will start wars but the rhetoric has to be different.

That puts the Dems at a disadvantage when they talk about issues that don't play to their strengths. It's like the Republicans trying to talk about "Social Security" - it's just laughable.

all because I disagreed with and insulted you in an internet chat-room

Yes. Fellows like you have been dominating the conversation long enough. You have nothing to say that we haven't heard. You're bored and boring because no one listens to you anymore and you've realized that those rightwing chat rooms are filled with 400 pound Rush Limbaugh look-alikes making eyes at each other.

You seem to think being Liberal means being doormats for pigs. Those days are over. You come in here dissing someone, or putting on your phony tough-guy intimidations, you'll get the treatment you deserve.

Too little, too late.

It has been obvious to anyone with critical thinking skills that neocons are not really conservatives. They are radicals. George Will is finding this out now?

Neocons have their roots in radical left. No wonder Hitchens has become a neocon follower.

I told you that, as a kid, I enjoyed dominating other kids, that such instincts were universal and basic, that some societies encouraged them and others didn't, that they could never be eliminated, that many people enjoyed conflict and did not find a peaceful world enticing.

I don't need your permission to hang around and I would never dream of stopping you from endlessly trying to have the last word with someone you consider "Boring, predictable, dreary, overdone by five years, banal, sorry nothingness" and "a baboon who slings mud"...

So you're here trying to dry hump our legs.

I can't see how that follows from the quote...but I do admit that I enjoy provoking you. However, that's not the reason for my posts or tone.

We - you and I - are good proxies for political conflict, two people with hugely different outlooks. We MUST talk to each other if political discourse is to have any meaning, and must do so honestly.

I find it ironic that I, who think that much conflict cannot be resolved peacefully, continue to try while you, who claim the opposite, think me and my views to be of no value and want me leave.

No, ironic is not the right word. Pathetic. Contemtible.

Kristol and Perle are neo-cons but Will and more particularly Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld and Rice aren't. There is a real distinction between the traditional conservatives and the neo-cons.

Daniel A. Greenbaum

You removed the sentence. Hard to have a dialogue when the context changes.

I'm quite aware that Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld and Rice are not technically neocons and that there is a difference, however small in realistic terms from my point of view, between "Old Right" conservatives like Pat Buchanan and the neocons.

What difference does it make? With the possible exception of Rice - who is just a toady on a par with her predecessor, Powell - the other three you mention hew to the neocon line for their own reasons.

White Rose's "3" rating is the correct one. My comment was rushed and did not give full weight to what George Will said on 9/12/01.

Americans were deliberately distracted away from world events by conservatives in government and media in the '90s to mask their real agenda.

I don't know what the entire conservative agenda is but part of it is to take control of energy resources worldwide.

Most Americans have no idea about the economic havoc and misery in Russia in the '90s deliberately created by the United States government with the help of "expert" advice from Harvard economists.

I am pretty sure that the United States or Israel blew up the Kursk nuclear submarine to provoke the Russians to retaliate, possibly with nuclear weapons.

Don't ask me how I came by them because I'm not sure myself but I have updated versons of maps from the late '60s of the North of Russian Federation marked up to identify nuclear test sites and potential oil fields.

LOL - I posted the maps online on a MSN personal space site weeks ago but I don't remember how to go back there. I think I named the space "Mrs Panstreppon". Now that I am thinking about the maps, I'll see if I can't find them and link to them here.

The maps are fascinating and I bet they will be particularly fascinating if those oil fields were stolen from you.

Those oil fields belong to everyone in Russia, not the gangsters who stole them. By gangsters, I mean the Russian Jewish oligarchs who were fronted by western companies.

The United Stated did not care about freedom for the people of Russia. The United States wanted to get its hands on the Russian oil fields. By the United States, I mean the criminals who have been running this country into the ground for their personal benefit.

George W. Bush is not going to tell his fellow Americans about how they are at risk from retaliation from the Russians but I will tell my fellow Americans.

The morons running the United States government in the last few decades have created such ill will among the rest of the world, the rest of the world is ready to blow us to kingdom come.

If I'm right, blowing up the Kursk was one of the most stupid and most irresponsible acts in modern history.

Anyone who has read about the Battle of Stalingrad knows why blowing up the Kursk put everyone in the United States in grave danger.

I'm not a foreign policy expert and I never attended military college but I know what blowing up the pride of the Russian nuclear submarine fleet meant to the Russians after the Russians had their faces kicked in by the United States for a decade.

I'm going to look for those maps. Maybe someone in the TPM Cafe knows some Russians who will be interested in them.

There, that's why I rated a "3" and not a "4".

What an interesting day this is turning out to be!

I just got a hot tip that some crooked Republicans are laundering money by investing it in a project to develop the South-Pervomayskoye oil deposit in the Saratov region of Russia.

The parties to the contact on paper are the State Geological Prospecting Enterprise (SGPE), "Nizhnevolzhskgeologiya", "IMEG and ??? "RUNO" companies.

IMEG, I know, is a UK engineering firm at www.imeg.co.uk.

I'm not sure how much further I can take this today but tomorrow I'll have plenty to keep me busy.

Hmm...How am I going to figure out which Republicans and which company is sheltering their investment?

A lot of money has been stashed in Russia in the last few years.

I chatted with a former cargo supervisor for one of the big airlines at JFK at a barbecue about three weeks ago. He told me that one of the NYC banks had huge amounts of cash flown to Russia every week.

He told me that, one time, the bank tried to add more cash to the shipment at the last minute and he finally had to put his foot down.

He called one of the officers at the bank and gave him what for. He threatened to send the entire shipment of cash back to the bank via the Brinks truck if the banker persisted with his attempt to ship more cash that day.

The guy I was talking to got laid off after 9/11. I asked what time frame he was talking about and he gave me the impression that huge amounts of cash were being flown to Russia right up until 9/11.

I'm not sure if he told me the name of the bank and I forget which airline he worked for. Delta, maybe? I could just ask him the next time I see him. He's my sister's neighbor and he is the Lloyd Harbor harbor master. How's that for a career change?

I suppose an investigator looking into money laundering operatons could request Brinks to provide a schedule of all deliveries of cash to JFK from a Manhattan bank every week in the months before 9/11.

I'm kind of curious myself as to why a bank would be flying huge amounts of cash to Russia every week.

Tom, I read several of them but I don't have the technical expertise to evaluate the various explanations for the Kursk disaster. The one put forward most often is the one about quality controls loosened as a result of Russia's economic woes.

I'm reluctant to accept that theory because some people in the Russian government knew before August 2000 that they had an enemy who was out to take over their country. I am assume the good guys are winning only because I am still here typing my little heart out about corruption every day.

Some time in the '90s, these concerned Russians realized that there was an organized group of people in the United States and elsewhere who planned to take complete control of Russia. They had worked to undermine not just Communism but every facet of Russian civil society. For example, heroin became widely available in Russia in the '90s.

I posted a link in another comment to an MSN My Space site where I posted seven picture maps of Russian oil fields and nuclear test sites. I'm pretty sure someone let me have them and that they are accurate.

Some people in the United States and the Soviet Union have known about the existence of those vast oil fields since the late '60s and they wanted them for themselves and their kind.

These people deliberately collapsed the Russian economy after the breakup of the Soviet Union in the early '90s and created economic chaos and severe hardship for the people of Russia who were rich but didn't know it. That's when the valuable Russian oil and gas assets were stolen by the oligarchs who are all Russian Jews or at least most of them are Jewish.

But I think the oligarchs were fronts in some or all of the cases and I think somebody intended to encourage the Russian people to blame all of their problems on the Jews down the road. On the face of it, the Russian people would have been perfectly justified to blame the Jews for stealing their oil and gas rights.

Me, if I was Russian, I'd want to hang every last oligarch in the public square to tell the world what I think of people who try to ruin my country and my family's well-being. Anyone who knows anything about the Soviet Union knows how the Russian people sacrificed for their country. Those oil and gas fields belong to them, not a handful of Russian Jews.

I'm only guessing what happened in the '90s but I think the plotters found out that not everyone in Russia was for sale and those Russians were in their way.

Blowing up the Kursk was a way to get rid of them. The plotters hoped that by blowing up the pride of the Russian Navy, the Russians would retaliate.

I don't know what happened then but the Russians obviously did not send a nuclear bomb sailing into the middle of Washington DC or New York City.

As far as who are the people behind this nefarious scheme, I think both "Democrats" and Republicans are involved. If I am right about the conspiracy, then I would put James A. Baker, Jon Corzine and Charles A. Gargano on the list as among the principal engineers and architects of the master plan.

But I say Baker, Corzine and Gargano based on my limited view and knowledge of world events. If I have had access to accurate information in the last six years, then I'd say I am more than 95% confident that I am right about them.

Within a month after 9/11, I was sure that James Baker and Charles Gargano were involved in 9/11 and I told that to everyone who would listen to me.

Why Jon Corzine? Corzine was Chairman of Goldman Sachs for ten years in the '90s when the infamous NASDQ stock swindle and the worldwide telecom scandal took place. Trillions of dollars were stolen from the middle class around the world by self-proclaimed elitists who think they know better as to how you should live your life than you do.

I'm somewhat vague here because I don't know all of the details but I knew in the '90s something terrible was happening. Every time I picked up the newspaper or turned on the television, I had lost economic and political ground and I mean me, Mrs Panstreppon who, at the time, was a moderate Democrat and member of the middle class.

I didn't want to work anymore after I engineered my departure from a really good job in July 1992. I was worried and depressed so I took diet pills and drank. The diet pills kept me alert and the alchohol took the edge of my concern and helped me to keep talking to other people.

I stopped drinking, for the most part, in 2000 after I got a DWI and stopped altogether after 9/11 because I knew I needed all my faculites. I didn't stop taking diet pills because they helped me concentrate on detailed information for long periods of time.

I never told anyone explicitly what I was doing. At first, I didn't know myself what I was doing or why I was doing it. For ten years, I never told anyone that I was seeing two different pyschiatrists who dispensed phentermine.

Between March and May 2001, I had a temp job at a bankrupt local telephone company (a CLEC in FCC terms) doing minor accounting work. To this day, I don't know what was really going on there but I thought I had uncovered one of the biggest financial crimes in world history.

Today, I know the worldwide telecom scandal was real but I dont't know who else knew what I did in May 2001. After I was laid off from the CLEC, I laid low in my house for a week until the beau came home from Florida. I had scared myself silly thinking that the crooks running the CLEC were on to me. I still wonder from time to time which of my concerns were real.

Of course, the diet pills enhanced my fear but the diet pills had never before made me paranoid in the ten years I had been taking them. I knew the fear itself was not caused by too many diet pills.

I've been around the block enough times and read enough about crime to know that if I had really come across a worldwide conspiracy to defraud investors and take control of our communications systems, nobody involved would want me walking around shooting off my big mouth.

LOL - Everyone who knows me knows you can't tell me anything and expect it to remain a secret.

A couple of days after I was laid off from the CLEC and "hiding" out, I was in an upstairs bedroom and from the window, I thought I heard someone wire my car in my driveway so I called the cops from my neighbor's house the next day.

I am sure the cop thought I was nuts when I told him I was an accoutant who may have uncovered fraud in the millions of dollars but I noticed he wouldn't start my car for me.

When the beau came home, he started my car and I felt safe again. So I jumped on the internet and started researching the telecommunications industry. At the same time, I wrote a paper letter to Paul Vitello at Newsday about some crooks I had come across in another temp job.

Why Paul Vitello? Because I had just read his column about corruption in Nassau County government and I knew he felt the same way I did about corruption. Angry? No, furious is the best way to describe it.

Paul Vitello was a longtime Newsday columnist who wrote about life on Long Island. He was not an investigative reporter but I trusted him to tell the right people about the information in my letter.

Why did I trust Paul Vitello? Because I had read his column for years so I knew a lot about Paul Vitello. I know we share the same sense of right and wrong.

A week or so later, Paul Vitello sent me his first of only two emails I ever received from him. He asked me where I got my information. I sent him a link to the bankruptcy court and that was it.

I already had told him where I got my information, what my concerns were and how I came to have them in my letter. There was no reason for me to give him any more information in an email. If he needed to know more about what was in my letter, he had to pick up the phone and call me.

Paul Vitello now works at the New York Times.

Let me skip ahead a couple of years. In 2003, I read about a $3 billion Russian gas company named Itera after I found its cheesy website on the internet. The Itera website looked like what I might have come up with if I had ever tried to create my own site.

I had never heard of this $3 billion gas company and I became suspicious when I read that it was a relatively new Russian company "owned" by Alex Makarov who looked to be about thirty years old.

What was really out of whack is that Itera opened offices in Jacksonville Florida in 1993.
Check sunbiz.org for the names of some of the people involved in Itera. You'll know right away what I mean.

Alexander's Gas & Oil website has or had a lot of background information about Itera. As a CPA and former auditor, I can say with authority, Price Waterhouse did not shine in the Itera case.

I'm stopping here but I'll try and post more about Itera and Enron and Goldman Sachs later.

Tom, I read several of them but I don't have the technical expertise to evaluate the various explanations for the Kursk disaster. The one put forward most often is the one about quality controls loosened as a result of Russia's economic woes.

--
Howard

*equal opportunity offense to both extremes*