Glenn Greenwald: Neocons and the truth: bitter enemies to the end

Glenn Greenwald
Thursday May 8, 2008 07:36 EDT
Neocons and the truth: bitter enemies to the end



In a July, 2006 article in Rolling Stone -- entitled "Iran: The Next War" -- the superb journalist James Bamford detailed the shady activities of numerous neoconservatives inside and out of the U.S. Government to plan an attack on Iran. Bamford focused on the role played by Michael Ledeen of the American Enterprise Institute and National Review, who created and began implementing an attack scheme in coordination with the Pentagon's then number-three official, Doug Feith, and Feith's deputy, Larry Franklin (subsequently convicted of felonies for passing classified information to AIPAC).

A couple weeks after Bamford's exposè was published, National Review enlisted former federal prosecutor Andrew McCarthy and talk show host Mark Levin jointly to author a defense of Ledeen and, more importantly, to savage Bamford for writing what they claimed was a pack of lies. The McCarthy/Levin article was entitled "Rolling Smear," sub-headlined "James Bamford writes a fiction about our Michael Ledeen," and accused Bamford of being "the latest in a growing crowd of hacks to smear our friend Michael Ledeen."

McCarthy and Levin specifically attacked Bamford's disclosure that Ledeen "had arranged a covert meeting in Rome with a group of Iranians to discuss their clandestine help" in attacking Iran. Said McCarthy and Levin:

Bamford, to the contrary, wants to turn the meeting into a nefarious plot by Ledeen and the neocons to push the nation into war with Iran. Yet, anyone even vaguely familiar with Michael's work knows that he has opposed military action against Iran -- notwithstanding that he was years ahead of most experts in accurately portraying Iran's role as the terror master at the center of the jihadist network.

So Bamford's claim was "embarrassing" because "anyone even vaguely familiar with Michael's work knows that he has opposed military action against Iran." Got that?

Here's Ledeen yesterday, writing in National Review's Corner (h/t sysporg):

Time to Attack Iranian Terror Camps? {Michael Ledeen}

So says John Bolton, and he's right. As you know, I have been proposing this for years. I always thought it was only a matter of time before we were compelled to take this action, which is a legitimate form of self-defense. And while we're at it, we should do the same thing to the Syrian camps as well. It isn't "sending a message," it's acting to protect our guys by fighting back in the proxy war the mullahs have been waging since 1979. Faster, please?

more...

http://www.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/2008/05/08/ledeen/

Attacking other nations who've not done one damn thing to us.

So Hitler's attacks on various nations that hadn't done anything to Germany was "a legitimate form of self-defense"?

nor reason to their targets, at least nothing that makes sense.

And hi, Lynn. Long time. :hi:

and dying. As long as they & theirs are making million$ from other people's killing & dying.

It's sick beyond comprehension. And the blow-back is gonna be one MFer of a bitch.

Hi babylonsis! :hi: