Tag: Punting the Pundits: Sunday Preview

The Sunday March of the NeoCons

Cross posted from The Stars Hollow Gazette

Every Sunday it’s almost guaranteed that the majority of the Sunday talk shows would be dominated by right wing neocons who have over the last 40 years managed to take this country into not just economic failure of the middle class but into being the laughing stock of the international community. This morning was no different as the war mongers and neocon war criminal were on full display.

Let’s start with “This Week” and the Bill Clinton’s former Press Secretary’s lien up. You can’t make this up, Laura Ingraham, a right wing radio talk show hack who managed to wheedle herself into a gig with ABC News, thinks that poor Eric Cantor can’t take a joke. During one of her appearances for David Brat, Cantor’s primary challenger, she suggested that Obama should have traded Cantor to the Taliban for Sgt, Bowe Bergdahl because of his stance on immigration reform. Ummm, Cantor is Jewish. She doubled down on that this morning’s “This Week” reacting to Cantor’s saying that comments like that “cheapened the debate.” Remember Daniel Pearl’s beheading, anyone?

While I dislike Eric Cantor, Laura went too far the first time and way over the antisemitism line the second. No Laura, we’re not laughing and you aren’t funny.

On “Face the Nation,” we have Senator Lindsey “I never saw a war I didn’t like” Graham on his fainting couch saying that the developments in Iraq and Syria portend another 9/11.

“The decision to withdraw U.S. forces created a vacuum,” Graham said. “Syria is launching pad. …If the central government in Iraq collapses – and that’s the goal of ISIS – Iran will own southern part of Iraq, that’s where the Shiites live; they can operate ISIS from Baghdad to Kurdistan all the way in to Syria. They will eventually march on Jordan and Lebanon – our best ally in the region is the King of Jordan – and they will attack us from that part of Iraq and Syria. According to our own Director of National Intelligence, FBI Director, the next 9/11 is coming from here.”

“That a very serious statement,” Schieffer said.

“I think it’s inevitable,” Graham replied. “They plan to drive us out of the Mideast by attacked us here at home.”

Where are Rudy, “a noun, a verb and 9/11,” Guiliani and Rep. Peter, “Mr. Islamaphobia,” King (R-NY)?

But the icing on this morning’s cake was on “Meet The Press” with David “The Dancing Master” Gregory’s interview with none other than one of the chief Bush war criminals former Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz. When asked by Gregory about his and his neocon buddies culpability for the sectarian violence, Wolfie hedged:

   Gregory: Where you and others culpable of underestimating the level of sectarian violence, warfare in the country that creates the potential for this kind of terror states to develop today?

   Wolfowitz: Look, you use the word sectarian so did Richard Engel, This is more than just the obscure Shia/Sunni conflict. This is al-Qaeda and al-Qaeda is not on the road of defeat, al-Qaeda is on the march. Not just in Iraq and Syria and we have real enemies in the US and what we should be looking for friends. I think when we stick with our friends and those friends are not always perfect, but we stuck with the Kurds for twenty years. Northern Iraq, Kurdistan is a success story. We stuck with them South Korea for sixty years. South Korea is a miracle story if we walked away from that country in 1953, that country was a basket case.

(h/t John Amato at Crooks and Liars)

Never mind several centuries of the Sunni/Shiite rift, it’s Al Qaeda? oy.

First off Wolfowitz should be in prison in either The Hague or a max security here in the US. He shouldn’t be marched out as an expert any defense or foreign policy matter, let alone the Middle East.

Pass the antifreeze and make mine a double.