The official and unofficial policy of letting neocons back into the fold with a mild tut-tutting made certain that apologists and shameless critics of the subsequent administration would feel safe enough to engage in this sort of behavior.

If, for example, certain former high-level officials were busy trying to think about their legal defenses they wouldn't have time for memoirs.

The problem for liberal internationalists, Democrat interventionists, and neoliberals was that they couldn't apply an appropriately harsh official and unofficial condemnation of the Bush administration without endangering those policies and goals that they share in common with the neocons.

The tacitly forgiving climate of the media, who are also culpable in the Iraqi boondoggle, also made this possible. People who wrote pure agit-prop, participated in Psyops, or generally cheered this nation into war never got demonized or hounded in a way poor Gary Webb did.

One person's "weird" is another person's basic fear. How can so many people who are batshit crazy be given any legitimacy in foreign affairs debates? Most of the Bush administration people could legitimately be arrested and transfered to the Hague if they stepped onto foreign soil if the same strong arm forces that keep them out of court here in the USA so pushes upon foreign governments.

Great. Demand the inspectors go in. Do the kubuki that the Iranians aren't playing by global rules. Then go all shock 'n awe on them with the IAF flying the flank. Wonderful.

Well, in the interest of fairness, it is also true that Obama did his share of berating as well, on Iraq at least. As for Afghanistan, though Obama doesn't seem to have enthusiastically fired on GWB, who can deny that fellow Democrats did; by the same token they had early on expressed disdain for the hapless Hamid Karzai and did their best to embarass him on at least one visit to Washington while GWB was very much in charge. Let's face it, a consistent theme of US policies in the Middle East has been to win an Arab acceptance of Israel; it seems all but forgotten nowadays but in a very early post-war dispensation the CIA was merrily encouraging an assortment of Syrian military men to knock off their predecessors. Which is probably rather better known in the region than most anyplace else -- which is why regional leaders and would bes know that panting obediently before Uncle Sam does not guarantee a long, happy life.

One wonders about Yoo and other over-fed comedians, really. But you'd wonder even more about a bizarre assortment of individuals who accept speaking fees of several thousands of USD to promote the Mujahideen E Khalq, also known as the Cult of Maryam (Radjavi). Where does the money come from? The funniest of the lot must surely be the Vermont hog-caller who would have Obama recognise Maryam Radjavi as President of Iran. I tell you, you just can't make this up.

A thought arises. If Ahmed Chalabi was (ho-hum) a secret Iranian agent all along, then whose agents are the Mysterious Background Figure howling imprecations in the general direction of Tehran?

good advice on the legality of torture! Surely we should listen to him on Iran. Is Berkeley further from Iran than Washington? One of our body politics' festering sores is that people trained as attorneys populate its ranks. In another of today's topics, the issue of who is better qualified to be a strategic planner/leader is discussed. Well, it's even more important to consider who should qualify to be a civilian, elected leader. I do not see law school and private or public practice as a good background for running or leading anything. Lawyers are lousy managers.

The reason the Republicans can get away with blaming the Obama administration for Bush's policies is because the American people are ignorant and do not watch the news or otherwise try to inform themselves. I think that it is less than 30% of the viewing public watch TV news. Then there are those who sop up FOX "news." Equally important is that Obama behaves like a pussy. I guess that it is hard for members of Congress to point out that the other party is lying when they themselves are lying.

So it is left to the media to avoid giving these neocons a voice. If they are hard up for a guest, they would give a chair to the devil. And, they would throw him softballs because they want to be able to bring him back. Let me know if you see a way out before we hit bottom.

FP contributors over on the Shadow Government blog have been telling the Obama administration how to handle Iraq since it started. That was almost three years ago.

They have added copious advice on some of the other subjects concerning which the Bush administration left America worse off than it was at the turn of the century. One could argue that, in context, this is a small thing -- they are just bloggers trying to protect their own reputations and possible futures in the next Republican administration. It's nothing like Larry Summers actually being hired by President Obama to help fix an economic mess he had helped create during his earlier service in government.

I only mention it because a intra-FP truce generally seems to prevail most of the time. I don't think that's such a great thing. Mind you, I think it's fine if the majority of FP bloggers who think Rothkopf is a tremendous windbag, that Hoffman should either post more often or get a partner, or that zombies are just stupid choose not to air that kind of dirty laundry. Policy differences, though, are pretty important. It matters whether the country recognizes how badly off the rails its foreign policy went during this century's first decade, and whether one of its two major parties even acknowledges the fact.

A bit more direct engagement, and even expressions of personal rancor, among FP bloggers would be a small but useful contribution to honest public discussion of the most important foreign policy issues.

The problem for liberal internationalists, Democrat interventionists, and neoliberals was that they couldn't apply an appropriately harsh official and unofficial condemnation of the Bush administration without kitchenremodeling endangering those policies and goals that they share in common with the neocons.