Bzrezinski criticized for unsportsmanlike conduct.

In an article in Salon.com on September 19, Steven Clemons describes a debate at a recent Washington dinner party attended by eighteen people at which “Zbigniew Brzezinski and Brent Scowcroft squared off across the table over whether President Bush will bomb Iran”.

Brzezinski, the National Security Advisor to President Carter, Clemons writes, said he believed Bush’s team had laid a track leading to a single course of action: a military strike against Iran’s nuclear facilities. Scowcroft, who was National Security Adviser to Presidents Ford and the first Bush, held out hope that the current President Bush would hold fire, and not make an already disastrous situation for the U.S. in the Middle East even worse.

The 18 people at the party, including former Pakistani Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto, then voted with a show of hands for either Brzezinski’s or Scowcroft’s position. Scowcroft got only two votes, including his own. Everyone else at the table shared Brzezinski’s fear that a U.S. strike against Iran is around the corner.

16-2?  I’d pretty much call that a blow-out, a rout, a beating.  Some accused Brzezinski of running up the score in a shocking display of unsportsman-like conduct designed to humiliate Scowcroft.  The original line in Vegas only gave Bzrezinski two points, so I guess some people got soaked on this one.  Running up the score to score humiliation points is not illegal, but it is frowned upon by the vast majority of spectators and players as an unnecessary provocation.  Scowcroft is considering lodging a formal complaint with the LFNSA (League of Former National Security Advisors).

Read the rest of this story to get a glimpse of David Wurmser’s multiple ticking clocks in the Middle East to see why Bzrezinski was probably right to run up the score while the clocks are still ticking.