Silicon Investor (SI) -- The First Internet Community

STOCKTALK

We've detected that you're using an ad content blocking browser plug-in or feature. Ads provide a critical source of revenue to the continued operation of Silicon Investor. We ask that you disable ad blocking while on Silicon Investor in the best interests of our community. If you are not using an ad blocker but are still receiving this message, make sure your browser's tracking protection is set to the 'standard' level.

Politics : Don't Blame Me, I Voted For Kerry -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: TopCat who wrote (30118)	6/10/2004 11:08:59 PM
From: SiouxPal	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 81568

Cat.... nothing to say to you. It would fall on deaf ears.

To: TopCat who wrote (30118)	6/16/2004 7:36:20 AM
From: ChinuSFO	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 81568

Iraq doomed, once the neo-cons won the White House battle By Robert Manne May 31, 2004 Even former enthusiasts now generally acknowledge that the Anglo-American invasion of Iraq is the greatest disaster in the recent history of US foreign policy. Nothing is more important than to try to understand how this catastrophe occurred. Recently two outstanding and impartial investigations into the origins of the Iraq war have been published - Bob Woodward's Plan of Attack and James Mann's Rise of the Vulcans. Woodward chronicles the road to invasion following September 11. Mann, more ambitiously, analyses the political and intellectual revolution in right-wing American foreign policy thought and practice - loosely, the rise of neo-conservatism - since the end of the Vietnam War. In combination, the pair can provide a far more detailed and nuanced understanding of the Iraq debacle than was previously the case. When George Bush came to power there were four genuinely significant influences on the Administration's foreign policy future - Vice-President Dick Cheney, Secretary of State Colin Powell, Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and his deputy, Paul Wolfowitz, the dominant neo-conservative foreign policy thinker of the age. In coming into office Bush had hawkish instincts but no policy thoughts. The battle between the group Mann calls the Vulcans was a struggle for the President's mind. The Vulcans fell into two clear camps. In one, the neo-conservatives - Cheney, Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz; and in the other, the more realist hawk, Powell. The neo-conservative power base was the Pentagon; the realists' the Department of State. Because in theory they neutralised each other, the Vice-President gained exceptional leverage. Cheney was a natural extremist and alarmist. In disputes between Rumsfeld and Powell he threw his weight behind the Pentagon. In addition, he used his influence to colonise the Bush Administration with zealous neo-conservatives. In Mann's account Cheney emerges as the key figure in the Bush Administration. He calls Iraq "Cheney's war". ...more smh.com.au