Seven years ago the Bush administration brought neoconservatives into a position of power with a dream of everlasting American hegemony, a unipolar superpower who would dictate military, economic and cultural terms to the world. The end of history in many neocon minds came with a momentous date - 9/11.

Seven years later, the Bush administration's mismanagement of the nation has ensured that that the neoconservative dream is crushed.

Russia is looking forward to, and recruiting allies for, a multipolar future -invoking 9/11 as the reason to do so.

"The solidarity of the international community fostered on the wave of struggle against terrorism turned out to be somehow `privatized'... It has become crystal clear that the solidarity expressed by all of us after 9/11 should be revived (without double standards) when we fight against any infringements upon the international law," [Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov] said.

Lavrov called for a new "solidarity" of the international community and a strengthened United Nations, saying only in the post-Cold War world can the organization "fully realize its potential" as a global center "for open and frank debate and coordination of the world policies on a just and equitable basis free from double standards."

"This is an essential requirement, if the world is to regain its equilibrium," he said.

Russia hasn't exactly been guiltless about double standards - I'm thinking about Chechnya and internal dissent as well as an over-response to Georgian aggression in South Ossetia - but Lavrov has a point. After 9/11, even Iranian leaders were proclaiming solidarity with the US. What happened was that the outpouring of genuine concern that could have shaped a new co-operative world was harnessed to give the neocon adventure a temporary Coalition of the Willing instead. Their lust for Empire burned up all the political capital America had on the world stage - and now even if McCain was elected to continue the neoconservative fever he wouldn't be able to, the world is just too resistant to it.

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Caroline Glick, deputy editor at Murdoch's Jerusalem Post and fellow of the neoconservative Center For Security Policy, is back on the Iran warpath in an article she entitles "It is time to act". She writes that "Iran is just a heartbeat away from the A-bomb", and to justify this claim she begins with three untruths.

Firstly:

Last Friday the Daily Telegraph reported Teheran has surreptitiously removed a sufficient amount of uranium from its nuclear production facility in Isfahan to produce six nuclear bombs. Given Iran's already acknowledged uranium enrichment capabilities, the Telegraph's report indicates that the Islamic Republic is now in the late stages of assembling nuclear bombs.

But the IAEA has already told the Telegraph that it's report, written by another neoconservative, Con Coughlin, is in error.

“The article, entitled ‘Iran renews nuclear weapons development’ published in [Friday’s] Daily Telegraph by Con Coughlin and Tim Butcher is fictitious,” IAEA Spokeswoman Melissa Fleming said in a statement.

“IAEA inspectors have no indication that any nuclear material is missing from the plant,” reads the statement.

Indeed, the IAEA guareantees that no uranium has been diverted to non-civilian programs or even can be without the Agency's knowledge.

Then, she says that "US spy satellites recently discovered what the US believes are covert nuclear facilities in Iran." Again - no. What was revealed (back in February) was an until-now unknown missile testing facility, revealed by commercial satellites rather than US ones. Whatever else it is it isn't a "nuclear facility". If it or any other more recent "finds" were, then the IAEA would be making a stink about it in their recent report, and they don't. Iran had enough problems putting together the Nanantz cascades and getting them to run. The notion that they might have been able to develop some other secret facility just as big is James Bond fantasy stuff - those "reporting" such fantasies, often sourced from the utterly-nutterly MeK, might as well photo-shop a white persian cat onto file pictures of Ahmadinejhad and claim it proves something.

Then, Glick writes:

As to the IAEA, this week it presented its latest report on Teheran's nuclear program to its board members in Vienna. The IAEA's report claimed that Iran has taken steps to enable its Shihab-3 ballistic missiles to carry nuclear warheads.

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David Sanger at the NY Times is one of those top-level reporters who often willingly carries water for the Bush administration - promulgating "unofficially official" leaks, for instance - in order to preserve his precious access. It appears that he's willing to do the same for the McCain campaign.

Hidden from view during much of the Republican convention here, a fierce struggle has been under way for the foreign policy heart of John McCain.

It centers on the deep schism inside the Republican Party over how to engage with the rest of the world, a running debate that has consumed different wings of the party and the Bush White House for the past seven and a half years. All week here, it was an undercurrent running just beneath the message of party unity and experience that Mr. McCain emphasized in his acceptance speech on Thursday night.

On Thursday night, Republicans here got few hints about whether Mr. McCain will appeal to the base by leaning toward the more confrontational, go-it-alone approach of President Bush’s first term, or whether he will adopt the somewhat chastened, let’s-negotiate tone of the second term, which has driven may of the hawks to despair.

Umm...bulls**t. It's been clear to most for some time now that the neocons won the battle. His chief foreign policy advisor is Randy Scheunemann ferchissakes!

Scheunemann told the New York Sun that despite a number of “realists” such as Brent Scowcroft among McCain’s other foreign policy advisors, his own influence, as well as that of other like-minded advisers like William Kristol and Robert Kagan, has been paramount. "I don't think, given where John has been for the last four or five years on the Iraq War and foreign policy issues, anyone would mistake Scowcroft for a close adviser," Scheunemann said, adding that even if Scowcroft were close, McCain "was not taking the advice.”

And alongside Randy stand his fellow PNACers R. James Woolsey, William Kristol and Robert Kagan.

I know that Sanger is just a channel - and that Mccain's messagers want the elecorate to be uncertain about whether he's a neoconservative warmonger himself (after his "Bomb iran" musical venture) - but this passes beyond suspension of disbelief.

If you needed another hint:

Sen. Joseph I. Lieberman is among several national security experts helping brief Republican vice presidential nominee Sarah Palin on foreign policy issues as she prepares to hit the campaign trail while cramming for a debate with her Democratic opponent...The McCain campaign has tapped Stephen E. Biegun, the national security adviser to then-Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist (R-Tenn.), to be Palin's principal foreign policy adviser.

Biegun is admittedly what passes for a "realist" in McCain's camp - he was until recently vice president of International Governmental Affairs for Ford Motor Company (nice bit of revolving-door back scratching, there) and was Executive Secretary of Rice's National Security Council in the two years leading up to the invasion of Iraq. A dove, he isn't. And Palin just doesn't strike me as the "realist" sort.

But Lieberman does say Palin will be neocon-ready if the ageing McCain should fail to see out a whole term.

(Previously published in a slightly different form at Newshoggers) 

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The Washington Post yet again manages to produce an op-ed only fit to wrap fish in, as neocon Michael Rubin - ex of the Pentagon's Office of Special Plans, the Office of the Secretary of Defense as an advisor to Rummie, political adviser to the Coalition Provisional Authority and unpaid hack for propaganda articles produced by the Pentagon's PR firm, the Lincoln Group - blames Joe Biden for eight years of Bush administration foreign policy failure in a desperate attempt to label Biden as "Iran's favorite Senator".

Here's how Rubin's logic works, as explained by Ilan Goldenberg of Democracy Arsenal:

Rubin makes a convoluted and nonsensical argument that A.  Joe Biden supported engagement with the reformist Khatami government of Iran during the late 1990s and first half of this decade.  That B.  During that time trade between Iran and the EU increased.  That C.  A National Intelligence Estimate found that Iran had stopped working on its nuclear weapons program in 2003.  From this he deduces that it's Biden's fault that Iran has moved ahead on its nuclear weapons program because it used increased trade with Europe to fund a nuclear weapons program.  What???

... Rubin basically takes a bunch of unrelated facts and uses them to conclude that Iran must have spent 2000 to 2003 working furiously on its nuclear weapons program and that it did it with money from Europe that somehow Joe Biden was responsible for.  Yup, putting those rigorous analytical skills that he learned that the Office of Special Plans to work.

Rubin also forgets to mention little details.  Like the fact that under this Administration trade with Iran has actually increased ten-fold and is at its highest levels since before the Iranian revolution.  Or the fact that the 2007 NIE concluded that Iran did in fact stop working on its nuclear weapons program in 2003 and was still years away from building a bomb.

Rubin then claims that Biden's vote against Kyl-Lieberman was partisan politics because Biden said that he didn't trust this Administration.  Ummm.... Trying to prevent war with Iran is not exactly a partisan activity.  It's not partisan to fear that an administration that has a track record of escalating conflict and misleading the American public might do it again.  That is in fact the exact opposite of partisan if you believe that war with Iran is against America's interests.

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 The Glasgow Herald's veteran political correspondent Iain McWhirter wonders wtf is wrong with America, that John McCain is actually level with Obama in the polls. A lot of Europeans are wondering the same thing.

It seems incredible, but as the Democrats gather in Denver to anoint Barack Obama, America could be on course to re-elect a Republican as their President. Not just any Republican either, but a belligerent 71-year-old who can't remember how many houses he owns, would happily nuke Iran and whose answer to global warming is to drill for oil in environmentally sensitive areas off the coast of America which don't even have much oil. But according to the polls, John McCain is drawing level with Barack Obama, and even pulling ahead.

Really, America is a strange, strange country. After a disastrous and illegal war, in which 4000 American soldiers have died, in the middle of an economic crisis largely caused by the investment houses that finance the Republican party, you would have thought it almost inconceivable that the Republicans could be re-elected. Could any political brand be more toxic? Has any party in history deserved to be thrown out at an election more than the Republicans in 2008?

... Yet enough American voters believe that John McCain might have the answers for him to become a serious contender. Which is scary. McCain is not an unknown quantity - he is a highly excitable politician with a notoriously short temper, who would bring his impetuous and confrontational style into American foreign policy. With the world entering a global economic slump, and old enmities raging in Europe, John McCain as President would be like a flamethrower in a fireworks factory.

It is scary - and Obama has to take a fair chunk of the blame. He's seemed flat since the exhausting primary race (here's hoping he does better at the convention) and although his campaign actually has a decent set of detailed policies, he's been awful at articulating them. Good on the inspirational rhetoric, crap on getting down in the weeds and it's left him looking like, as the right likes to put it, an "empty suit". Maybe Biden will help there - even when I've disagreed with him on policy, Joe's been adept at putting detailed policies into easy to swallow forms that don't obscure that there is detail there.

But McWhirter points to the major reason a McCain presidency is scary:

I got an insight into the McCain worldview last week at the Edinburgh Book Festival in a session I did with Robert Kagan, McCain's leading foreign affairs adviser, and author of The Return of History and the End of Dreams. The good news is that the war against terror is past tense, it seems, because he didn't mention al Qaeda once. The bad news is that America might be about to revisit, not the cold war, but the era of nineteenth-century great power rivalry, which is how Kagan characterised the current state of international affairs.

He believes the great faultline is between America and an axis of authoritarianism represented by China and Russia. There is a new era of geopolitical confrontation, according to Kagan, as Russia re-arms and China builds the biggest army in the world. America has to step up."The future international order will be shaped," he says, "by those who have the power and the collective will to shape it." No prizes for guessing whether John McCain is up to the military challenge. Europe, which Kagan dismissed as an irrelevant entity in the new world of hard power, would get trampled in the rush.

That's basically an admission from Kagan that a McCain foreign policy would consist entirely of looking for reasons to fight with Russia and China.

The neocons finally have their wet dream. No longer do they have to hype up a bunch of ragtag misfits hanging out in Pakistan's wilds or an "existential threat" from Iran that is anything but. They've got an enemy worthy of their ideology, their notion that America shows itself best when in a war for its very existence. They want to take on the two largest rival military powers in the world, both at once. And they don't want to do it by diplomacy, containment or any of that other pantywaist stuff. Oh no - they're want to use "hard power' - that's a euphemism for war, folks - and they believe McCain is just the angry old duffer they can lead by the nose into providing it.

"Scary" doesn't even begin to describe it. Completely batshit insane would be better. In case anyone doesn't remember, the era of nineteenth-century great power rivalry led directly to the Great War and WW2, the first of which began over a tiny incident that lit the fuse on the powderkeg. How comforting is it to know that, under a McCain presidency, the neocons would actively go looking for a new spark?

(Crossposted from Newshoggers)

[McCain speaking in front of the NRA in May, 2008]

John McCain's campaign won't say whether he's for or against allowing suspected terrorists to buy guns, as he tries to pander to his lobbyist pals and the Republican pro-gun base but wanders into the "War On Some Terror" minefield by mistake.

Sen. John McCain portrays himself as a strong supporter of Second Amendment rights. But does that extend to gun rights for suspected terrorists? His campaign won't say where he stands on a bill to eliminate a gun-control loophole that even the Bush administration wants closed: a gap in federal law that inhibits the government from stopping people on terrorist watch lists from buying guns. The bill was inspired by an official audit covering a five-month period in 2004 which found that, because of the loophole, the Feds had to greenlight 35 out of 44 cases where a gun buyer was on a terrorist watch list. One group opposed to closing the loophole is the National Shooting Sports Foundation, a gun manufacturers' trade association. Until this spring, one of its congressional lobbyists was Randy Scheunemann, now a top McCain campaign adviser on foreign policy.

... Registration documents filed by Scheunemann's company, Orion Strategies, list the terror-gap bill as one of its specific lobbying objectives, and the registrations listed Scheunemann as a lobbyist until he took a leave. McCain's campaign refused to answer questions about whether the senator supports or opposes the White House plan to close the loophole, and it also declined to say if Scheunemann had ever lobbied McCain on gun-control bills. "Randy Scheunemann is a foreign-policy adviser to Senator McCain, and he is on leave from Orion Strategies. We have no further comment," says Jill Hazelbaker, a campaign spokeswoman.

Yes, we know neocon Randy got McCain in over the old guy's head on Georgia. But does McCain really want to keep dancing around issues for the paid man who seems to do all his thinking for him?

The NSSF rightly says that the current bill removes "due process" from gun owners because "anyone can be put on the list". But what about due process for all those non-flyers first? (Or maybe for those held at Gitmo after being handed in for a bounty and tortured to ellicit confessions? What about their due process?) What was that? Randy doesn't get paid to whisper in John's ear about them? Oh, that makes everything clearer.

P.S. And just to add icing on the cake, Scheunemann was himself arrested by Capitol Hill police for a gun violation back in 1997 - possession of an unregistered gun and ammunition - when he was Trent Lott's top advisor. Talk about a conflict of interests.

  Dr. Christopher A. Ford, the U.S. Special Representative for Nuclear Nonproliferation, has joined the exodus from the Bush administration, and headed straight for neocon think-tank The Hudson Institute. Ford has been one of the administration's leading shills in demonizing Iran for supposedly contravening the NPT by doing what the NPT says it can - enriching uranium - while utterly ignoring the non-NPT possession of nukes by the likes of India, Pakistan and Israel. In February 2007 he told a Vienna audience that Iran "has tried to hijack legitimate discussions of the NPT's Article IV and twist them into a politicized form designed to give cover to Tehran's nuclear weapons ambitions." Of course, by the end of the year the Bush administrations own NIE concluded that Iran had no weapons program - something that still has the wingnuts in a tizzy.

The man who has been in charge of Bush's "nonproliferation" efforts (hah!) should feel right at home at Hudson. It was founded in 1961 by several hardline Cold Warriors including Herman Kahn, a nuclear strategist famous for his efforts to develop "winnable" nuclear war strategies. It's currently also ideological home to John Bolton apologist Herbert London, Giuliani's foreign policy advisor Norman Podhoretz (The Case For Bombing Iran) and Supreme Court wingnut Robert Bork.

Like many a Bush administration neoconservative before him, Ford intends disappearing back into the think-tank woodwork for now.

(VOAvideo of US, Poland Sign Missile Defense Deal)

American plans for missile defense bases in bordering nations infuriate Russia, and the US has had to bend over backwards to push through the Polish and Czech sites over the objections of those nation's populace - even going so far as to offer Poland US troops and air-defense missiles on their border with Russia. But why is the Bush administration pushing so hard for a defense against a so-far entirely hypothetical threat from Iran and to have bases for missiles that don't work?

Phil Coyle, the Pentagon's former top weapons tester (.pdf), says it's all for nothing. "The system proposed for Poland and the Czech Republic doesn't exist, has never been tested, and has no demonstrated effectiveness to defend Europe or the U.S. under realistic operational conditions," Coyle contends in an exclusive conversation with DANGER ROOM.

He says that even our existing missile defenses, installed in Alaska, couldn't stop more than one or two rudimentary missiles from, say, Iran. "For these reasons the U.S. BMD system proposed for Europe is causing strife with Russia for nothing."

Well, not exactly for nothing.

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Dave Schuler at Outside The Beltway:

... like us, Russia is quite paranoid. Or, as Woody Allen once quipped, what’s a three syllable word beginning with ‘P’ that means you think that everybody’s against you? Answer: perceptive.

Dave argues that the Bush administration simply went along "fat, dumb, and happy" with the Clinton Administration's policy of making clear to Russia that there had only been one winner of the Cold War and I think there's a lot of truth in that, although the Bush hawks have taken it to a whole new level. But as Clinton-era hawks commenting on the Georgia crisis have reminded us, they don't really believe in compromise and diplomacy. While in domestic politics "It's Clinton's Fault" doesn't hold water 8 years later, in foreign policy, where other nations see "America under successive leaders" while Americans see "the Clinton and Bush administrations", 8 years is just enough time to put a good hoppy head on the home-brew of resentment.

The real problem, however, is that we're in danger of turning that perception into one of "three successive American leaders".

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Fox & Friends host Steve Doocy's son Peter took the bronze on Monday's Worst Person in the World segment on Countdown for his pathetic hit job on Senator Barack Obama during a live shot from his school.

William "The Bloody" Kristol won the silver for accusing Senators Obama and Clinton for not condemning MoveOn's General Betrayus ad, when in fact, they both signed on to the Senate amendment condemning the ad.

Bigoted pill popper, Rush Limbaugh, took top honors for his insulting and racist remarks made on FOXNews, in which he accused Bill Clinton of hitting on his date, and referred to Los Angels Mayor, Antonio Villaraigosa as the Shoeshine Boy, or a Secret Service Agent. Said Olbermann of Doocy Jr:

"Wow, I wonder which emotion impacts dad more at this moment? Pride that at twenty years old, the boy is already a completely replaceable cog in the vast Rupert Murdoch media manipulation machine, or buyer's remorse when he gets the bill for college and realizes the kid's mind has already been nailed shut."

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In one of the odder transformations seen this primary season, some of the harshest critics of Hillary Clinton are now championing her candidacy with great gusto. Kristol seems to lead this pack of concern trolls from the vast rightwing conspiracy, but we've also seen Rush Limbaugh, Joe Scarborough,and Karl Rove among others rush to her defense. And then last month's bizarre endorsement from her once arch nemesis Richard Mellon Scaife.

In this clip from yesterday's Fox News Sunday Kristol rallies to her side saying, "She is a better candidate than he is. "

And Kristol continues today in the NY Times:

I normally don’t claim to speak for other members of the vast right-wing conspiracy. After all, we’re each nefarious in our own, individual way. Indeed, we often disagree with one another.

But I do think I can speak for most of my fellow right-wingers when I say this: We once looked forward with unambivalent glee to the fall of the house of Clinton. Many of us still do. But we also see the liberal media failing to give Hillary Clinton the respect she deserves. So, since we conservatives believe in giving credit where credit is due, it falls to us to praise Hillary.

Of course, the disdain for all things Clinton has not lessened one iota among these people. The annoying clucking sound we hear is only Republicans savoring the prospect of Democratic discord, their only real means to retaining the White House.

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Former head of the Iraqi Provisional Government and Neo-Con Apologist L. Paul Bremer comes on Late Edition with Wolf Blitzer on the fifth anniversary of the invasion and occupation of Iraq to admit, that yes, mistakes were made (and gosh, he had made recommendations that were ignored over assumptions that turned out to be false)...blah blah blah, but even still, he doesn't think they would have done anything differently in retrospect. 

BREMER: Well, I respectfully disagree with the senator. I think under the circumstances the president faced and the country faced in 2003 with our intelligence agencies, the agencies of France, Germany, Russia, Israel, Britain all thinking that Saddam had weapons of mass destruction and concerned about the possibility that Al Qaida terrorists, Islamic extremists would get their hands on this stuff, I think the decision to go into Iraq was the right one at the time.

BLITZER: You still think it was the right decision?

BREMER: Yes, I do.

BLITZER: Despite everything we now know that there were no weapons of mass destruction, that any connection between Al Qaida and Saddam Hussein was very minimal if there was anything serious there. You still think it was the right thing to do?

BREMER: I do. I think it was the right thing to do, and I think Iraq is on the road now to becoming -- it will take time -- a democratic government in the middle of the Middle East, which is, in itself, quite an accomplishment.

So, I respectfully disagree with the senator. And I think it's not clear -- he makes the argument -- I don't think it's true -- that we are less safe than we were before. I don't think that's true. We have lost almost 4,000 Americans' lives there, and that's a tragic cost that we have had to pay. 

Wow.  A very tragic price to pay considering we went in for NO REASON, Bremer.  And this tired meme that all these other countries agreed with our intelligence continues to be put out without any challenge.  OUR OWN weapons inspectors questioned it.  The UN questioned it.  France and Russia questioned it.

I posit that this is an auxiliary to the definition of insanity (doing the same thing over and over, expecting a different result): knowing that you have brought forth a tragedy of global and epic proportions, saying that you'd do it again make you not only mentally deranged but unworthy of being given a national platform to spout such insanity again.  And Wolf?  Maybe a challenge or two to the insanity spewed in front of you might make you seem a little less like a mouthpiece for the White House.   Even Chris Wallace manages it occasionally. 

Transcripts below the fold:

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While this video of the ad goes after Rep Nancy Boyda (D-KS) (btw, whose response so far has been really good), she is just one of many "Freshman Dems" targeted by this fear-mongering ad campaign so far. As the Minnesota blog Bluestem Prairie notes:

Other Freshman Dems targeted that we know of so far: Joe Courtney and Chris Murphy (CT); Carol Shea-Porter and Paul Hodes (NH); Jason Altmire (PA); Ron Klein and Tim Mahoney (FL); Gabrielle Giffords and Harry Mitchell (AZ); Jerry McNerney (CA); Melissa Bean (IL); Joe Donnelly (IN); ... Michael Arcuri and Kirsten Gillbrand (NY) ; Steve Kagan (WI). [...]

Defense of Democracies is affiliated with the non-profit, non-partisan Foundation for Defense of Democracies, a policy institute focused on defeating terrorism and promoting democratic values.

The ad is similar to one posted last week by House Republicans on gop.gov, that also misleadingly blames the expiration of the "Protect America Act' on the Democrats. The fact is that "there is one reason, and one reason only, that the Protect America Act expired. Its name is “George W. Bush.”

Not surprisingly, the group The Foundation for the Defense of Democracies' list of "Directors, Fellows, Personnel" includes many PNAC-neocons like Kristol, Krauthammer, and Perle (a lot more on the group here). The list also includes, however, several prominent Democrats, which begs the question: Why would Democrats be affiliated with a group that would be running these ads?

Update: Begged question answered. mcjoan:

Who's behind the shadowy organization isn't entirely clear, but it is definitely an offshoot of the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies, an organization that until a few days ago listed among its board of advisors Donna Brazile, Rep. Eliot Engel (D-NY), Rep. Jim Marshall (D-GA), Zell Miller, Sen. Charles E. Schumer (D-NY). Engel, Schumer and Brazile have all resigned from the board, with Brazile making this statement

Why is the neocon crowd so excited about the Arizona senator? Max Boot, an unpaid foreign policy advisor to the McCain campaign, explains.

It is hard to see how Bush could reverse this decline in America's "fear factor" during the remaining year of his presidency. That will be the job of the next president. And who would be the most up to the task?

To answer that question, ask yourself which presidential candidate an Ahmadinejad, Assad or Kim would fear the most. I submit it is not Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama or Mike Huckabee. In my (admittedly biased) opinion, the leading candidate to scare the snot out of our enemies is a certain former aviator who has been noted for his pugnacity and his unwavering support of the American war effort in Iraq.

Kevin makes quick work of Boot’s painful perspective.

There you have it. If you think the most important aspect of a president is the ability to “scare the snot out of our enemies,” then McCain’s your guy.

Now, you might think that after seven years of trying exactly this, with only the current collapse in our fortunes to show for it, the neocon establishment might at least pause for a moment to wonder if there’s more to foreign policy than scaring the snot out of our enemies. But no. The real problem, apparently, is simply that the Bush/Cheney/Rumsfeld administration wasn’t good enough at it. Not bellicose enough. Not unilateral enough. Not warlike enough. What America needs is someone even more bloodthirsty than the crew that got us into this mess. Time to double down, folks.

This, in a nutshell, is what McCain is offering by way of a foreign policy.

Does anything really need to be added?

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