investigating Feith

* bill gallagher:

"The same neocon nuts who came up with the Iraq war also shaped Bush's views on the conflict, and their positions reflect the most extreme postures of right-wing Israeli politicians.

Douglas Feith is Exhibit A for that mentality. Until recently, he was Donald Rumsfeld's trusted deputy. He headed up the Pentagon's rump intelligence group that came up with the serial lies about Iraq's weapons and ties with al-Qaeda. Gen. Tommy Franks, who led the invasion of Iraq, once referred to Feith as "the stupidest f---ing guy on the face of the earth."

Feith has longstanding ties with Israel's Likud Party and he's advocated invading Syria and Iran. Feith is a dangerous warmonger. He has criticized George H.W. Bush's and Bill Clinton's views on Palestine.

Feith abruptly left the Pentagon in May, claiming he wanted to spent more time with his family. Incredibly, Georgetown University hired Feith to teach a course on the Bush administration's strategy in the war on terror. That's like hiring Vice President Dick Cheney to teach hunting safety.

Juan Cole, the University of Michigan professor and Middle East expert, wrote before Feith's departure that he is the target of at least two investigations. Cole reported that "Feith has been questioned by the FBI in relation to passing by one of his employees of confidential Pentagon documents to the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) which in turn passed them to the Israeli Embassy. The Senate Intelligence Committee is also investigating Feith." At least Feith will do less damage at Georgetown."

* juancole:

"Although Washington is always accusing Syria of letting jihadis into Iraq, I'm unconvinced it is deliberately doing so. The Baath regime in Damascus is dominated by Shiite Alawis, a kind of local folk Shiism that doesn't have ayatollahs and accepts a sort of mythological way of thinking. The Baath regime's biggest enemy is Sunni fundamentalism. So the idea that Bashar al-Asad is deliberately building up a fundamentalist Sunni statelet right next door just strikes me as unlikely. The border is 800 miles long, and probably can't be controlled. If relations warm between Baghdad and Damascus, Syria may try even harder to round up the Sunni jihadis."

* juancole:

"Bush went to Vietnam and boasted about how we would have won if we had not quit. This was, he said, the lesson for Iraq of the Vietnam War. He managed to be wrong about two wars at once and to anger both his hosts (how churlish!) and the Iraqi public. The American Right never admitted that they lost in Vietnam, thus the Rambo movies and, Melani McCallister argues, the US admiration for Entebbe. Iraq was their chance, they thought, to get it right. Bush had also said insulting things to the Philiippines about how wonderful it was thst we had colonized them (and killed 400,000).

Colonialism is over with. When will they get that through their heads?

And actually we can't win in Iraq by just staying. Just like when you are sinking in quicksand, staying put is not a virtue."