Neocon Plays it Cool

Richard Perle appeared on Hardball yesterday. You all know Richard, right? He's a neocon's neocon. He's the cheerleader of the cheerleaders. He is one of the main reasons we are in Iraq. He is one of the main reasons Iraq is the mess that it is today. His optimistic (ahem... wishful, dumb, naive) view of how the post-war period would unfold may go down as one of the biggest military and political disasters in American history. For example, how about this little Perle of optimistic wisdom from September 2003, about a month after the United Nations headquarters was destroyed and twenty-two people were killed?

And a year from now, I'll be very surprised if there is not some grand square in Baghdad that is named after President Bush. There is no doubt that, with the exception of a very small number of people close to a vicious regime, the people of Iraq have been liberated and they understand that they've been liberated. And it is getting easier every day for Iraqis to express that sense of liberation.

Incredible. So, here I am watching Hardball and this ass comes on and starts spewing the same optimistic crap all over again. Within minutes he managed to totally dismiss the eruption of violence in Iraq over the last two days. While at the same time he was very quick to blame our new number one evil, Iran, with planting the bomb that blew up the mosque which ignited this escalation of sectarian violence. Do they ever fuckin' learn? There will be no roses. There will be no parade. There will be death and more death.

Even conceding the debatable point that Iraq is not "in" a civil war, it is at least "verging" on it. And if the neocons continue to downplay the severity of the situation, as they have downplayed the severity of every serious (deadly) situation the United States has faced to this point, we will once and for all wipe the word "verge" from this conversation and then we are really screwed.