Trump’s Takes America Closer to War in Middle East

Apologists for Donald Trump's reckless action in announcing that that America will withdraw from the nuclear deal struck with Iran three years ago are engaging in all kinds of untruths and gyrations to avoid the obvious.  Namely, that Trump's action in trying to abrogate the agreement - an agreement that every other member of the UN security council signed - will (i) serve to further isolate America diplomatically (one of Vladimir Putin's dreams/goals) and (ii) open the way to potential war which will delight the Christofascists who yearn to start armageddon and the neocons who learned absolutely nothing from the Iraq War disaster where America threw away more than a trillion dollars and thousands of military members' lives.  Equally delighted will be military contractors like Halliburton - Dick Cheney must be salivating - and  oil company interest who foolishly believe they might get their hands on Iran's oil reserves.  I am very happy that my son-in-law left the military after his severe injuries in Afghanistan.   While he may be safe, other men and women will likely end up dead or maimed before Trump's misrule is over.  A main editorial in the Washington Post looks at the dangers Trump's actions pose to America and the world.  Here are excerpts:

THE NUCLEAR deal struck with Iran three years ago was far from perfect, but President Trump’s decision to abrogate it over the opposition of our European allies and without a clear strategy for replacing it is reckless and, most likely, self-defeating. Mr. Trump has opened a rift with Britain, Germany and France, who were partners to the pact along with Russia and China, and he has handed Iran’s Islamic regime some unfortunate opportunities.

What he [Trump] did not acknowledge is that international inspectors as well as senior members of his own administration have confirmed that Iran has complied with the accord, which has vastly reduced its stock of enriched uranium and made it extremely difficult for the regime to develop nuclear weapons in the next decade. The president held out the prospect of “a new and lasting deal” that would cover not just nukes but also Iran’s development of missiles and interventions in Middle Eastern wars. But he offered no road map for achieving that ambitious goal.

The first consequence of Mr. Trump’s decision could be conflict with the Europeans. . . . . European governments, which have said they will not renounce the nuclear deal, may fight any U.S. attempt to enforce the restrictions, including with their own sanctions. Having tried and failed to satisfy Mr. Trump’s objections to the agreement without breaking it, they are unlikely to willingly collaborate in a new U.S. attempt to crush the Iranian economy.

Iran and European governments could agree to continue the pact in defiance of Washington. But Iran’s hard-line military and security apparatus, which has always opposed the accord, will press to resume uranium enrichment, restrict inspections or perhaps even race for a bomb. How would Mr. Trump stop such a breakout, short of war? One reason the nuclear deal was struck was a conclusion by the administrations of both George W. Bush and Barack Obama that military action was a risky and uncertain means to prevent an Iranian bomb.

Mr. Trump was pushed to exit the deal by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Saudi ruler Mohammed bin Salman, whose countries are already engaged in low-level wars with Iran. But the chief of staff of Israel’s own army has said that the nuclear deal is “working and putting off realization of the Iranian nuclear vision by 10 to 15 years.” Mr. Trump’s decision could eliminate that grace period . . . .

[Trump] has frequently said that he has no wish for further Mideast wars; his decision has made one more likely.

Let's be clear on something else: neither Netanyahu nor Saudi ruler Mohammed bin Salman are true friends of America.   Netanyahu suffers from his own form of megalomania and the Saudis, not Iran, remain the main financiers of Islamic extremism across the globe.  Neither cares about the damage done to America and the squandered monies and American lives that Trump may yet cost the nation.

Hillary's Republican Neocon Fan Club Explained

Some far left critics of Hillary Clinton would have voters believe that she would rush the nation to war and that she is too "hawkish" in the foreign policy realm. Such criticism, of course, ignores Donald Trump's comments about disbanding NATO and loose talk about using nuclear weapons - apparently against Middle East foes.  As a piece in Vox argues, Clinton is not the hawk that some would paint her to be and, like Obama, she has had to deal with the disastrous aftermath of the Iraq War and other fool's errands launched by Bush/Cheney before Obama ever was sworn in as president. Moreover, given Trump's purported agenda, Republican neocons supporting Clinton really have nowhere else to go than to support Clinton.  Their motivations and policies should not automatically be attributed to Hillary Clinton.Here are article highlights:

Donald Trump has found ways to alienate some members of all factions of conservative politics, but neoconservative intellectuals, operatives, and policy hands have been the most heavily represented element in the ranks of anti-Trump Republicans.

That’s largely because unlike social conservatives or free marketers, Trump hasn’t even tried to court neoconservative support. On the contrary, he’s gone to substantial lengths to exaggerate the extent of his historical differences with them, pretending to have opposed regime change operations in Iraq and Libya that he in fact supported.

Under the circumstances, it’s natural that Hillary Clinton would fish in these waters as she seeks the broadest possible coalition of support against Trump. But things like leading neoconservative Robert Kagan organizing a fundraiser for Clinton gives pause to liberals in ways that Clinton garnering support from Republican businesswoman Meg Whitman doesn’t.

When Obama became president, he tapped Clinton to serve as secretary of state, in which capacity she served as a de facto leader for more hawkish elements of the administration, as opposed to officials such as Susan Rice and Ben Rhodes who’d backed Obama in the primary.

During Clinton’s 2016 primary campaign against Bernie Sanders, Clinton ran clearly to the left on a range of domestic issues to lock down interest group support in her favor. On foreign policy, where there is little in the way of interest group pressure, she did not — choosing instead to praise Henry Kissinger and hit Sanders from the right on Iran and Cuba.

This record raises suspicion that there is more at work than an alliance of convenience, with the Intercept’s Rania Khalek writing of a “Clinton-neocon partnership” that “has grown steadily over time” for reasons that go beyond Trump.

But despite the fears of her left-wing critics, Clinton is no neocon. Nor is there really much evidence to back up a broad-brush notion that Clinton is especially “hawkish” in a generic sense. Clinton’s record overwhelmingly reflects continuity, for better or for worse, with longstanding aspects of American foreign policy.

Critics of the status quo will find plenty to dislike, but there’s no reason to believe her administration would represent any kind of dramatic departure in foreign policy — not just in the Middle East but around the world.

Neoconservative thinkers and politicians such as John McCain and Marco Rubio favor a coercive approach to North Korea’s nuclear weapons programs, confrontation with leftist regimes in Latin America, and a ratcheting up of American involvement in proxy conflicts with Russia in former Soviet republics. Last but by no means least, they endorse a hard line on China, seeing toughness and resolve as likely to succeed in intimidating China into good behavior.

It’s simply not the case that Clinton shares this worldview.

Were she running against a conventional Republican rather than Vladimir Putin’s favorite American politician, her dovish approach to Russia — and Putin’s ultimate spurning of her overtures — would be a key GOP talking point.

Nonetheless, she continues to support diplomacy with Russia aimed at reducing nuclear weapons stockpiles, and has generally stood by Obama’s reluctance to provide lethal assistance to the Ukrainian military.

Clinton favors a diplomatic approach to the North Korean nuclear issue, addressed Chinese adventurism with quiet (and effective) multilateral diplomacy, and worked publicly and privately on behalf of the Obama administration’s diplomatic opening to Cuba. And Clinton, like Obama but unlike any Republican, regards fostering international cooperation on climate change as an important foreign policy priority.

She’s not an ardent anti-imperialist, obviously. But she is not a neocon in Democrats’ clothing. She’s a wonky mainstream Democrat who has a lot of respect for America’s military and diplomatic professionals, who sees foreign policy as about trying to use the full range of tools to advance a wide range of objectives in a complicated world.

Clinton does differ from Obama in at least one important specific way — her view of the alliance system prevailing in the Middle East.  The US–Saudi Arabia alliance has always had an odd-couple dynamic to it due to the massive gap between US and Saudi ideological commitments, but during Obama’s time in office it’s become a truly bad marriage. Obama and his core team of longtime advisers have been increasingly vocal about their discontent with the Gulf monarchies.

The Obama administration sees these countries as engineering a fundamentally irresponsible regional policy that helps fuel international terrorism and then deploying their considerable financial resources to push a political agenda inside the United States rather than to solve problems constructively. Obama’s statement in an interview with Jeffrey Goldberg that the Saudis need to learn to “share” the region with Iran was a strikingly bold on-the-record remark, but entirely consistent with things he’s said more quietly for years.

The Saudis, for their part, have grown increasingly paranoid that Obama secretly dreams of orchestrating a reversal of alliances that would see the United States partner with Iran.
In the immediate past, this friendlier disposition to America’s traditional Gulf allies has, operationally, lent a “hawkish” cast to Clinton’s record. It made Clinton one of the members of Obama’s team who was most eager to intervene in Libya, and it’s left her consistently to Obama’s right in terms of eagerness to be involved in anti-Assad military action in Syria.

But this is a consistent difference in assessment of America’s allies, not a consistent difference in assessment of the merits of regime change.

[A]ll of this cannot be evaluated without considering the context of Clinton’s opponent. Donald Trump is not a particularly “dovish” thinker on national security issues. He’s promising a large, unspecified US military buildup, a policy of routine torture, and the use of military force to plunder foreign natural resources. In a sense, he’s clearly well to the right of George W. Bush or any other major contemporary politician in terms of embracing violence as a solution to problems.
But at the same time, his proposal (if you can call it that) to abrogate the terms of NATO and turn it into s

The fact that stepping completely outside the bounds of longstanding bipartisan US foreign policy consensus would lead some foreign policy–focused Republicans to support Clinton shows that she is broadly inside that consensus, not that she’s some kind of super-hawk.

The consensus itself, of course, is by no means above criticism and has long had its critics on the left. They’ll find plenty of reason to be unhappy with Clinton. But once Trump fades from the scene, so will the conservative hawks who’ve spent the past seven years hammering the Obama administration and are now flocking to Clinton more out of desperation than anything else. 

Jeb Bush's Middle East Policy No Different from Idiot Brother's

For almost 15 years now, America has been plagued by a never ending disaster in the Middle East that was launched for the most part by the lies and deceit of George W. Bush and Emperor Palpatine Cheney.   In short, they and their advisers took America to war in Iraq based on deliberate lies and a fantasy world view of how their fool's errand would play out.  Thousands of Americans - and hundreds of thousands of Iraqis - paid with literally their lives and/or ruined lives and America was partially bankrupted.  Enter Jeb "Jebbie" Bush and his ego driven desire to be president.  Terrifyingly, Jebbie's view of the Middle East and his would be policies would likely be a carbon copy of his idiot brother's disastrous policies.  Jebbie and the recycled advisers he has assembled from his brother's failed regime have learned nothing from the last 15 years.  This alone disqualifies the man from ever occupying the White House.  The Washington Post looks at the concern of even Republicans who revel in killing Muslims have over Jebbie's would be policies.  Here are excerpts:

When Jeb Bush stepped up onto the fabled soapbox at the Iowa State Fair on Friday, fairgoers pelted him with questions about the legacy of his brother, a former president. And his father, another former president. And one of his foreign policy advisers, Paul D. Wolfowitz, the architect of his brother’s war in Iraq. And about the war itself.

Under a blazing sun, Bush expressed irritation with what he called “the parlor game” of focusing on Wolfowitz and other past Bush administration advisers who have resurfaced for this Bush campaign.

This was supposed to be the week when Bush would finally lay out his own thoughts on how to combat the Islamic State terror group and put Hillary Rodham Clinton on the defensive — and wrest himself from his family legacy in the process. But over several days, it has become evident that his ideas on the subject are remarkably similar to George W. Bush’s ideas and that he firmly believes that Democrats — not his brother — deserve the blame for the unrest in Iraq and neighboring Syria.

His new struggles with the issue also come as he is fading in polls and being drowned out by the angry outsiders dominating the race.

According to Bush this week, the removal of Saddam Hussein from power “turned out to be a pretty good deal.” The 2007 troop surge was “an extraordinarily effective” strategy. By the time his brother left office, he said, the “mission was accomplished” in Iraq because security had been restored.

Bush also said he won’t rule out waterboarding in the interrogation of terrorism suspects, although he added, “I do think in general that torture is not appropriate.”

He said it might be necessary to deploy more U.S. forces to both Iraq and Syria — and that troops already on the ground should be embedded more closely with local forces.

Democrats are eager to exploit Bush’s remarks this week to remind voters of his family ties. During a town hall in Dubuque, Iowa, on Friday afternoon, Clinton took aim at Bush’s criticism of her, noting that his brother signed an agreement as president to withdraw combat troops from the country by 2011.   I do think that it’s a little bit surprising to hear Jeb Bush talk about this,” she said. “He expects the American people to have a collective case of amnesia.”

Most Americans still believe the Iraq war was a mistake and are opposed to new military engagement — making Jeb Bush’s approach to national security risky.

Carl Owens, a hog farmer, stood off to the side taking in the scene.  “I don’t know if he’s like his brother and dad or not,” said Owens, 59. “I wasn’t too happy with them. Mr. Bush, the last president, look at the mess he got the United States into over there where we shouldn’t have been. Kind of like the Vietnam War. We shouldn’t have been there.”

Mr. Owens, the hog farmer has clearer vision than Jebbie.  And if anyone is playing "parlor games" it is Jebbie and his delusional advisers - except their games involve throwing away more American lives. 

 

Jeb Bush, Endless War and the Neocon Trap

Jeb Bush claims to be "his own man" but on foreign policy so far, he looks to be a retread of the disastrous policies of his brother, the Chimperator, and we all know what those policies cost America in terms of squandered lives and treasure.  How else to explain Jebbie surrounding himself with the same group of advisers who proved wrong on virtually every aspect of the Bush/Cheney Middle East policy. Worse yet, these advisers still refuse to admit how wrong they were.  There's much to dislike about Jebbie, but the prospect of more Middle East disasters along suggests he should never make it to the White House.  A piece in The Daily Beast looks at the frightening situation.  Here are excerpts:

Are the neoconservatives turning on Jeb Bush? It would be ironic, considering the men his brother turned to for foreign policy advice. It would also be highly problematic—since foreign policy establishment hawks should represent one of Bush's few natural constituencies on the right. But it's hard to observe recent developments and not suspect something is afoot.

I've often observed that Sen. Rand Paul has to walk a fine line in order to keep all the disparate elements of his coalition together, but it's increasingly looking like Jeb Bush is having to do the same thing. He has the legacies of his father and brother to contend with. And while these legacies aren’t necessarily mutually exclusive, they aren't necessarily complimentary, either. And therein lies the trap for Jeb: does he alienate the GOP’s main cadre of foreign policy activists and thinkers, or does he saddle up with them and risk being seen as the second coming of his brother?

The foreign policy "realist" community hopes Jeb will be the "smart" son and follow the "prudent" footsteps of his father. . . . . But neoconservatives prefer George W. Bush's more aggressive foreign policy, and want the GOP to nominate a hawk in 2016. Now Jeb Bush's campaign needs to figure out what kind of President Bush he would be, and he likely won’t be able to assuage the concerns of both camps.

[T]he Washington Free Beacon, which is widely thought of as a neoconservative outlet, recently noted: "Jeb Bush’s selection of Baker as a foreign policy adviser has sparked concern among conservatives and in the Jewish and pro-Israel communities. Baker is infamous for his hostility to Israel, having said during his tenure as secretary of state in the George H.W. Bush administration, 'F--k the Jews, they don’t vote for us anyway.' Baker is also a supporter of President Obama’s Iran negotiations."

The comparatively moderate, intellectually inclined Jeb Bush would seem like a natural candidate for neoconservatives to rally behind. But Baker speaking at J Street while working for the campaign in some capacity is cause for concern. This is dangerous if prominent hawks start to suspect that Jeb might not be as friendly to their cause as the Ted Cruzes of the world. Kristol and Rubin would seem to be sending a message that Bush that he can't take their support for granted. They need him to prove that he's a lot more like Dubya than his dad.  

Politico is already reporting that Jeb Bush is distancing himself from Baker, noting that he "disagrees" with him on Israel. And writing at National Review Wednesday morning, Jeb is made his pro-Israel position clear. Let's see if that’s enough for the critics. If Jeb really wants to win the nomination, he might have to drop Jim Baker like a bad habit. 

The take away?  We don't need another Bush in the White House - never, ever. 

Quote of the Day: Andrew Sullivan on the Insanity of the Neocons and GOP

By any objective standard, the War in Iraq was an unmitigated disaster unless, of course, you were/are a Halliburton shareholder like Emperor Palpatine Cheney.  Hundreds of thousands of civilian dead, thousands of American service members dead and the U.S. budget blown through the unfunded war.  Moreover, the neocon fantasy that Iraq could become a stable democratic nation has proved to be just that: an utter fantasy.  Yet the neocons and many Republicans are rushing to blame the current fiasco on Barack Obama and utterly disregard the fact that the current Iraq disaster is the direct outcome of Bush/Cheney and GOP decision to lie to the American public and take America into war that lacked any valid justification.  Oh, and did I mention the fact that the geniuses in the Bush/Cheney regime totally ignored the sectarian powder keg that was going to be unleashed?  Andrew Sullivan takes to task the lunatics who got us into the Iraq War and who now want to repeat that disaster.  Here are the money quotes:

What do you do with near-clinical fanatics who, in their own minds, never make mistakes and whose worldview remains intact even after it has been empirically dismantled in front of their eyes? In real life, you try and get them to get professional help.

In the case of those who only recently sent thousands of American servicemembers to their deaths in a utopian scheme to foment a democracy in a sectarian dictatorship, we have to merely endure their gall in even appearing in front of the cameras. But the extent of their pathology is deeper than one might expect.

Most people are aware that relatively few of the architects of a war have fully acknowledged the extent of their error – let alone express remorse or even shame at the more than a hundred thousands civilian deaths their adventure incurred for a phony reason. No, all this time, they have been giving each other awards, lecturing congressmen and Senators, writing pieces in the Weekly Standard and the New Republic, being fellated by David Gregory, and sucking at the teet of the neocon welfare state, as if they had nothing to answer for, and nothing to explain.

it is shocking; it is, in fact, an outrage, a shameless, disgusting abdication of all responsibility for the past combined with a sickening argument to do exactly the same fricking thing all over again. And yes, I’m not imagining. This is what these true know-nothing/learn-nothing fanatics want the US to do.

 Last time, you could ascribe it to fathomless ignorance. This time, they have no excuse. ISIS is not al Qaeda; it’s far worse in ways that even al Qaeda has noted undermine its cause rather than strengthen it. It may be strategically way over its head already. And the idea that the US has to fight both ISIS and Iran simultaneously is so unhinged and so self-evidently impossible to contain or control that only these feckless fools would even begin to suggest it. Having empowered Iran by dismantling Iraq, Kristol actually wants the US now to enter a live war against ISIS and the Quds forces. You begin to see how every military catastrophe can be used to justify the next catastrophe. It’s a perfect circle for the neocons’ goal of the unending war.

The sooner that these people are driven completely from the halls of power - or even near access to power - the better off the nation will be.  What I find equally upsetting is that the neocons care nothing about civilian deaths since, in their minds, non-white, non-Christians do not even count as humans.

 

The Neocons Lose It Over Rand Paul's Accusations About Bush/Cheney

In many ways I view Rand Paul as a loose cannon.  But on the positive side, he is saying some things that need to be talked about: Bush/Cheney motivation to invade Iraq, failed GOP foreign policy, and the sinister role that Dick Cheney played in formulating some of the darkest years of America's existence.  Whether or not Paul will be the GOP nominee is anyone's guess, but the entertainment factor is watching the usual far right suspects go absolutely batshit crazy over Paul's refusal to completey and blindly support the failed neocon foreign policy positions and some other aspects of the new orthodoxy demanded by the GOP base.    A column in the Wall Street Journal exemplifies the neocon hysteria.  Here are excerpts:

Republicans, let's get it over with. Fast forward to the finish line. Avoid the long and winding primary road. It can only weaken the nominee. And we know who he—yes, he—has to be.

Not Jeb Bush, who plainly is unsuited to be president. He is insufficiently hostile to Mexicans. He holds heretical views on the Common Core, which, as we well know, is the defining issue of our time. And he's a Bush. Another installment of a political dynasty just isn't going to fly with the American people, who want some fresh blood in their politics.

Unless the dynasty is named Clinton. Or Kennedy. Or Nunn. Or Carter. Or, come to think of it, Paul. In that case, dynasties are just fine, thank you.

No, what we need as the Republican nominee in 2016 is a man of more glaring disqualifications. Someone so nakedly unacceptable to the overwhelming majority of sane Americans that only the GOP could think of nominating him.

This man is Rand Paul, the junior senator from a state with eight electoral votes. The man who, as of this writing, has three years worth of experience in elected office. Barack Obama had more political experience when he ran for president. That's worked out well.

Mr. Paul was in New Hampshire last weekend, speaking to conservative activists at the Freedom Summit, emphasizing the need for Republicans to do a better job of reaching out to Hispanics and African-Americans. 

Let's move on to a YouTube video of Mr. Paul in April 2009, offering his insights to a college group on foreign policy. Channeling Dwight Eisenhower, the future senator warned "we need to be so fearful of companies that get so big that they can actually be directing policy."

"When the Iraq war started, Halliburton got a billion-dollar no-bid contract. Some of the stuff has been so shoddy and so sloppy that our soldiers are over there dying in the shower from electrocution."

Then he gets to his real point: Dick Cheney, who opposed driving all the way to Baghdad when he was defense secretary in the first Bush administration, later went to work for Halliburton. "Makes hundreds of millions of dollars, their CEO. Next thing you know, he's back in government and it's a good thing to go into Iraq."  Mr. Paul's conclusion: "9/11 became an excuse for a war they already wanted in Iraq."

If Mr. Paul wants to accuse the former vice president of engineering a war in Iraq so he could shovel some profits over to his past employer, he should come out and say so explicitly. Ideally at the next Heritage Action powwow. Let's not mince words. This man wants to be the Republican nominee for president.

And so he should be. Because maybe what the GOP needs is another humbling landslide defeat. When moderation on a subject like immigration is ideologically disqualifying, but bark-at-the-moon lunacy about Halliburton is not, then the party has worse problems than merely its choice of nominee.

Andrew Sullivan goes on to note some of Paul's other statements that drive the neocons berserk.  Here are highlights:

[O]n containing Iran’s potential nuclear capacity? Paul is perfectly sane, and in line with US strategy against far more formidable nuclear adversaries during the Cold War. If he is completely out of the mainstream so was George Kennan and every president from Truman to Reagan. To describe the strategy that won the Cold War as somehow extremist is simply bizarre. Here’s Paul’s basic position:

“I’ve repeatedly voted for sanctions against Iran. And I think all options should be on the table to prevent them from having nuclear weapons,” Paul said on “This Week” Sunday. But he said those who oppose the idea of containment — or living with an Iran with nuclear weapons — ignore that such an outcome has been necessary in the past.

“They said containment will never ever, ever be our policy,” Paul said of those who oppose Iran getting nuclear weapons at any cost. “We woke up one day and Pakistan had nuclear weapons. If that would have been our policy toward Pakistan, we would be at war with Pakistan. We woke up one day and China had nuclear weapons. We woke up one day and Russia had them … The people who say ‘by golly, we will never stand for that,’ they are voting for war,” he added.

Well, they are, aren’t they? And you can tell by the failure to address this core point. Stephens doesn’t address it, preferring to mock Paul’s alleged electability and pick the low-hanging fruit of Halliburton. Lowry doesn’t go there, either. And Rubin of course simply flaps her arms up and down. . . .

What do we make of this? I’d say it’s a sign that the neoconservative wing of the GOP is deeply alarmed by the traction Paul has on foreign policy with a base that remembers Iraq and Afghanistan more vividly than Bret Stephens. And the combination of the ferocious attacks with an inability to rebut its core point – isn’t containment preferable to war? – suggests a bit of a bluff. Paul should avoid the conspiracy theories and focus on the argument. And on that ground, he’s winning.

The shrieks and backstabbing will indeed be great sport to watch as the GOP tries to determine which occupant of the clown car will be the 2016 GOP presidential nominee.

 

A Fake PhD Played the Neocon Fantasy World and Hijacked The Syria Debate

One of my constant criticism of the far right and the Christofascists is their love of "experts" who in fact have no legitimate credentials.   Indeed, FRC, CWFA and AFA are notorious for their fake experts who have no background on issues on which they pontificate despite the lofty titles they are given.  As long as one is saying what these extremists want to hear and playing to their prejudices, you can become an overnight sensation and have credibility where none is merited.  Think Progress looks at the manner in which Elizabeth O’Bagy, a supposed PhD expert on Syria duped the pro-war Neocons and Republican members of the U. S. Senate.  The problem is that Ms. Bagy is no PhD and she played people for fools by saying what they wanted to hear.  I never cease to be amazed how people who ought to know better never bother to check out credentials.  Here are highlights from the Think Progress story:

Dr. Elizabeth O’Bagy, Syria expert, made quite an impression on Senator John McCain. During Senate hearings, the former Presidential candidate quoted at length from her recent Wall Street Journal op-ed painting a rosy picture of a mostly secular, pro-Western anti-Assad insurgency.

“John, do you agree with Dr. O’Bagy’s assessment of the opposition?,” the Senator asked the Secretary of State John Kerry. “I agree with most of that,” he replied. 

Except Dr. O’Bagy wasn’t actually a doctor. Her PhD was fabricated, a lie she told her employers at the Institute for the Study of War (ISW), an influential neoconservative-aligned think tank, to get hired. Ironically, it ended up being the lie that got her fired Wednesday. This postmodern reenactment of the Icarus myth also provides a bizarrely informative window into the way that Washington’s foreign policy sausage gets made.

O’Bagy got her start last year, when she interned for ISW’s Iraq portfolio while completing a Master’s in Arab Studies at Georgetown University.  . . .  Several media outlets have repeated this account as fact in their write-ups of O’Bagy’s firing, all maintaining that she is still in the process of completing a Georgetown doctorate.

This is almost certainly false. Either O’Bagy was at one point enrolled a PhD program and dropped out, or she has been lying the entire time. Some evidence points to the latter.  . . . . She is not listed as a PhD student on the Government department’s website. She does not exist in the university directory. A search of the entire Georgetown website turns up only one hit, a congratulations notice for her Master’s graduation.

However O’Bagy acquired her contacts, the work they helped her produce was influential and widely respected. Over the course of roughly a year, she went from a graduate student and intern to a pundit making regular appearances on Fox News and being published in Foreign Policy, The Atlantic, and well, The Wall Street Journal. She was promoted to Senior Analyst and then to Syria Team Lead at ISW, and had become known as a go-to expert on the Syrian rebels among foreign policy experts. But the closer Icarus flew to the sun, the faster the wax on her feathers began to melt.

Regardless, O’Bagy’s rise and fall is yet more evidence that the talented people who populate America’s media and policy apparatus never seem to quite fully internalize: never, ever lie about something someone else can prove you wrong about. You’re going to get caught.

Andrew Sullivan has some telling, put dead on point comments about the Neocons and the far right:

The Kagans – so many you can barely keep track of them – are a particularly Washington clan. Like other neocons – the Podhoretzes and Kristols come to mind – the family occupies various posts and play assorted roles in advancing the idea of US global hegemony, constant interference in other countries (but never Israel!), and warfare. They played a key part in deceiving much of official Washington – wittingly or not – about the situation in Iraq, and thereby bear responsibility for the catastrophe that followed. Their “surge” subsequently failed to achieve what it was designed for: getting a multi-sectarian government with lower levels of mass violence in Iraq. You can see how utterly divorced from reality that pipe-dream was by just reading the news reports daily of the low-burning civil war there every day.

So is anyone surprised they were duped again? Zack Beauchamp (former Dishtern) gives a great account of the sorry story of how the woman who became one of the more conspicuous advocates for full-scale entry into another Middle East civil war was not what she said she was. Elizabeth O’Bagy lied to Kimberley Kagan about her doctorate and Kagan never checked it out before putting her Institute for the Study of War on record behind it.

It’s a classic example of how dubious actors with vague backgrounds can ascend so rapidly in Washington as long as they are parroting one faction’s preferred version of the truth. This isn’t unique to the neocons, of course. But since they currently hold the world record in being duped and duping others on matters of war and peace, the fact that this is still happening – especially after the lies and bullshit that occurred before the war in Iraq – is instructive that these people never learn.

These were the people touting Chalabi, remember? These were the people telling us there was no serious sectarian issue in Iraq under Saddam and a civil war was highly unlikely if we invaded. These were the people dismissing the notion in advance that we did not have enough troops to secure the country. These were the people – once trapped in their own delusional universe – that sanctioned grotesque and endemic torture of prisoners as a way to get out of it.

It sickens me to see this same propaganda machine wheeled into action again, and to see Washington take it seriously. But it heartens me as well that this unreliable person and demonstrable liar has been exposed. May she be the first of many.

Which brings us back to the question of why does anyone listen to these people who have proved to be so demonstratively wrong much less supposed "experts" that no one has vetted?