First Fukuyma. Now Buckley. In a February 24 column in the National Review titled “It Didn’t Work”, Buckley writes:

“I can tell you the main reason behind all our woes—it is America.” The New York Times reporter is quoting the complaint of a clothing merchant in a Sunni stronghold in Iraq. “Everything that is going on between Sunni and Shiites, the troublemaker in the middle is America.”

One can’t doubt that the American objective in Iraq has failed. The same edition of the paper quotes a fellow of the American Enterprise Institute. Mr. Reuel Marc Gerecht backed the American intervention. He now speaks of the bombing of the especially sacred Shiite mosque in Samara and what that has precipitated in the way of revenge. He concludes that “The bombing has completely demolished” what was being attempted—to bring Sunnis into the defense and interior ministries.

Our mission has failed because Iraqi animosities have proved uncontainable by an invading army of 130,000 Americans.

Of course the paleo-con Buckley was never a big supporter of the neoconservatives (like Fukuyama), so this is not earth shattering. But it is coincident with the whole Dubai ports deal and the Republican congressional revolt. Always good to see the Republicans eating their young.

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…and gets in some nice shots on the rump neocons in the process:

New York Times Magazine: After Neoconservatism

Fukuyama was part of the neocon chorus for an Iraqi intervention immedieately after 9/11. On 9/20/2001, he signed a letter to President Bush stating in part:

We agree with Secretary of State Powell’s recent statement that Saddam Hussein “is one of the leading terrorists on the face of the Earth….” It may be that the Iraqi government provided assistance in some form to the recent attack on the United States. But even if evidence does not link Iraq directly to the attack, any strategy aiming at the eradication of terrorism and its sponsors must include a determined effort to remove Saddam Hussein from power in Iraq. Failure to undertake such an effort will constitute an early and perhaps decisive surrender in the war on international terrorism.

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“To the vice president’s credit, he did own up to it. On FOX News he said the fault was his, he can’t blame anybody else. Boy, it’s amazing, the only time you get accountability out of this administration is when they are actually holding a smoking gun.” —Bill Maher

“Rumors are that the reason Dick Cheney didn’t say anything about the hunting accident for about 24 hours was because he had been drinking. And I’m thinking, well jeez, he was probably drinking when we planned the invasion of Iraq.” —David Letterman

“Cheney now says he can’t blame the shooting on the guy who got shot. He said we tried that for three days. It didn’t work.” —Jay Leno

“They were in a car, they drive along, they get out of the car, he shoots his friend in the face, then they get back in the car and they go hide for 18 hours. That’s not hunting…that’s an episode of ‘The Sopranos’” —Jay Leno

There’s oh so much more at about.com.

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So big Dick admits to Brit Hume in his Fox News interview he drank “one beer” at lunch “several hours” before shooting his buddy in the face. Joe Strupp and Greg Mitchell, in anEditor and Publisher story dated Feb. 14, have Katherine Armstrong tripping all over herself trying to deny that anybody had been drinking that day. (Armstrong owns the “ranch” where the shooting ocurred.)

Oh, okay, “there may have been beer in coolers but she didn’t think anyone who was hunting that day had any,” write Strupp and Mitchell, who also note:

CNN today reports that Armstrong had told CNN she never saw Cheney or Whittington “drink at all on the day of the shooting until after the accident occurred, when the vice president fixed himself a cocktail back at the house.”

So the critical players in the story are admitting drinking ocurred on the day of the shooting, before and after the fact. Could this explain Cheney’s reticence in calling the authorities? Holy shit, what a story that would be!

Update: David Corn has a nice summary of the inconsistencies in the various versions of the story. Also, David Sanger and Anne Kornblut have decent coverage in the New York Times.

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(found on flickr)

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Carol D. Leonnig reports in today’s
Washington Post that Scooter already has implicated Dick
Cheney in the Plame leak probe.



This was originally reported by Murray Waas in the National
Journal.



David
Corn writes that Libby’s defense strategy may be to request
loads of classified evidence from the CIA in the hopes of being denied
access. The hope is that then the judge will agree to dismiss the case.

It’s a risky strategy, and it shows what a strong case Fitzgerald probably has.

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This image is no joke.

The New York Times reports:

United States military authorities have taken tougher measures to force-feed detainees engaged in hunger strikes at Guant�namo Bay, Cuba, after concluding that some were determined to commit suicide to protest their indefinite confinement, military officials have said.

In recent weeks, the officials said, guards have begun strapping recalcitrant detainees into “restraint chairs,” sometimes for hours a day, to feed them through tubes and prevent them from deliberately vomiting afterward. Detainees who refuse to eat have also been placed in isolation for extended periods in what the officials said was an effort to keep them from being encouraged by other hunger strikers.

Repeat after me: We do not torture. We do not torture. We do not torture.

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With George Bush in the audience for Coretta Scott King’s funeral, the Rev. Dr. Joseph Lowry let it rip.

“We know now there were no weapons of mass destruction over there,” he said, prompting a standing ovation. “But Coretta knew and we know that there are weapons of misdirection right down here. Millions without health insurance. Poverty abounds. For war billions more but no more for the poor.”

You can see a short video at ThinkProgress.org.

Errin Haines, in an AP story, noted that Lowry’s quote was a “takeoff on a line from a Stevie Wonder song. The comment drew head shakes from Bush and his father as they sat behind the pulpit.”

The president’s budget is a disgrace, in case you haven’t been paying attention. Billions slashed from popular programs for the poor. Tax cuts for the rich. Phantom revenue from proposed drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. And still an enormous defecit.

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