The latest issue of the French weekly Le Nouveau Parisien (article not online, I’m afraid; translation by Louis Coté, who turned me on to it) contains a thorough and depressing analysis of the ascendancy of Bush’s neocon political appointees over the career U.S. analysts and diplomats who used to provide continuity and sobriety in foreign policy. The summary paragraph:
Under Bush and Cheney, the neoconservatives have expanded their power base throughout the U.S. foreign policy bureaucracy; by the end of January, they had replaced thousands of career foreign service officers and analysts with their own members. One former senior United Nations official, who has extensive experience with the U.S. foreign policy establishment, depicted the turnover as “a white coup,” with ominous implications for the Islamic world. “Professionals in the State Department and the CIA are out; others are waiting to be kicked out,” he said. “We may be too late. These guys now believe that they are stronger than ever since the Reagan Revolution.” He said that, particularly in consideration of the collapse of the USSR as a superpower, the neoconservatives’ attitude was “To hell with the Islamic World. You can do as much as you like.”
UPDATE: I’m afraid I’ve been taken in by my translator. This report was not in Le Nouveau Parisien but in
I am not surprised by your failure to spot the fraud. I read the same article in the New Yorker and didn’t spot it.
It seems your translator was really translating. Still, he makes an excellent point and one I believe to be true
Anyone care to explain what this post is about? If satire, it’s too deep for me. The link to the NewYorker is not quite the newyorker (look at the url), though when you delete part of it and try again, you get to Hersh’s current piece there.
Whether the specific points are true or not, the fact remains that the neocons have been trying to take over for decades. They have already infiltrated the court system, so I wouldn’t be surprised if they’ve slithered their way into the CIA and State Department. Case in point is Bush’s pre-emptive NUCLEAR strike plan against Iran. Bush is completely insane.