Chaos in Iraq | Moyers & Company
Tuesday, September 30, 2014
I am not a religious follower of Bill Moyers & Company on Public Television, but that may need to change. Moyers has done some tremendous work in the past in bringing common sense to bear on domestic and foreign policy issues.
Below is the link to a program I missed three months ago (June 20th) in which Moyers interviews Colonel Andrew Bacevich about Iraq and the Middle East. Please watch the interview. It is important.
In the meantime, I have been wondering, in view of the unfolding debacle in Iraq, why there has been no outcry in Congress for a commission to reexamine US policy in the Middle East. Obviously, something went radically wrong. Does anybody want to know what it was? Maybe not. Probably everybody in Washington is afraid of getting slimed. The degree of bipartisan malfeasance, profiteering and stupidity is tremendous, it seems to me.
Do you vaguely remember something called the Iraq Study Group, headed by former Secretary of State James Baker III? Dick Cheney instructed his sock puppet, George Bush, to throw that report into the waste paper can at the start of 2007. Looking back, we can only speculate what would have happened if the ISG report had been adopted by the Cheney Regency.
I recall at the time suggesting that Baker be appointed Secretary of State to carry out the recommendations of his own report. The only way that could have happened would be if Bush had fired Cheney, or forced him to retire for health reasons, as his Vice President. I note in the Wikipedia write-up on the ISG the following:
Frederick Kagan, scholar at the American Enterprise Institute (AEI) along with General Jack Keane, U.S. Army (retired) introduced the idea for a troop surge in Iraq at a 14 December 2006 event at AEI and again at a 5 January 2007 event attended by Senators John McCain and Joseph Lieberman. The report "Choosing Victory: A Plan for Success in Iraq" was released at the latter conference. While the ISG report was ostensibly the driving force for a policy change in Iraq, the AEI report outlined the actual policy adopted by the Bush Administration.[19]
Professor Frederick Kagan is the brother of Robert Kagan, whom Moyers highlights in his introduction to the Bacevich interview. The Kagan brothers are face cards in the bipartisan Neocon network which has been compulsively and obsessively trying to inject Uncle Sam into all sorts of self-destructive escapades in furtherance of Israeli foreign policy objectives.
Robert Kagan's wife, the charming Victoria "fuck the EU" Nuland, works inside the Obama White House. She was embedded in the Cheney Regency as well, advising the Regent on foreign policy. Then she worked for Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, as State Department spokesperson. Then she went on to become the Assistant Secretary of State for European and Eurasian Affairs under hapless John Kerry. In that latter capacity, she instigated the train wreck in the Ukraine.
Robert Kagan appears to be the new point-man for America's Neocon double-agents. He and Victoria are headed for further glory in the upcoming HR Hildebeest Administration. Why am I not surprised?
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