You are contributing to the enlightenment of the American people in a very significant way. All my thanks.

to foment strife and chaos in the MENA and Central Asia. The neocons are back in full control in Washington.

The Neoconservative Comeback
by Lawrence Wilkerson

To those who are strongly opposed to Donald Trump, his present troubles no doubt resonate positively. The looming prospect of his successful removal from office through impeachment proceedings—or his just leaving as pressure for such proceedings builds—might even be such opponents’ fondest wish. But as Colin Powell used to say to me, “Be careful what you wish for…”

In this instance, such a warning has nothing to do with the line of succession and what Jane Mayer in The New Yorker called “The Danger of President Pence.” It has to do instead with the return of the Neoconservatives (Neocons) and only by extension, then, with a Pence or other caretaker presidency.

Because what is happening today, as Trump is preoccupied increasingly with the considerable, ever-growing challenges to him personally and to his presidency institutionally, is the reentry into critical positions in the government of these people, the people who gave America the 2003 invasion of Iraq. Even those many of them who declared “Never Trump”—as arch-Neocon Eliot Cohen summed it up—are salivating at the prospect of carrying out their foreign and security policy while Trump essentially boils in his own corrupt juices.
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The very idea of such people being given another go at the ruination of the Republic ought to curdle our blood, rattle our bones, and give us immediate and effective pause. “Never again” is an appropriate battle cry because these people are certifiable. They have had as much to do with the almost 18 years of war in which the U.S. finds itself inextricably enmeshed, with the brutal and bloody turmoil in the Middle East, and with the destruction of American credibility in the world, as any president, legislature, or special interest group.
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Collective Amnesia

This whole business of a possible Neocon return in some ways reminds me painfully of the manner in which two key intelligence analysts, Robert Walpole and Larry Gershwin, were treated in late 2003. These two men were most responsible for the “intelligence” contained in Powell’s presentation on Iraq’s WMD to the United Nations in February 2003, along with the CIA Director, George Tenet, and the Deputy Director, John McLaughlin. Walpole and Gershwin were rewarded for their work, while McLaughlin is now a much-ballyhooed—and likely well-paid—TV consultant. Tenet is the only one who has had the good grace to stay mostly silent. Moreover, he probably did not get rich from his memoirs, At the Center of the Storm, and anyone watching his final address as Director in 2004 at Georgetown University, as I’ve done several times, has to muster a little sympathy for him and realize he got no real professional reward either.

The Neocons are never silent or far away or ashamed to speak out. Neither are they particularly desirous of nor do they even care about rewards. They are far more dangerous. They remind me of Leon Trotsky. In, of, and because of them, there is damage and destruction for the ages—damage and destruction at the end of which they are convinced the world will be alight with their ideology, a utopia, a heaven-on-earth, a world in which their second homeland, Israel, can be proud—and safe.

Gore Vidal once said we are “the United States of Amnesia”. Certainly in terms of the Neocons and colossal intelligence failures, we seem to be.

the Iraq war crime was our biggest mistake, yet surrounds himself with its creators. Meanwhile, no Dem takes him to task for having such lunatics and shitstains as his advisers.