Neo Culpa, Vanity Fair

February 16, 2007 4:04 PM

Neo Culpa is a Vanity Fair article from January, which details how many of the conservative idealists & empire builders allied with the Project for the New American Century are realizing that their life's work has been subverted for Halliburtistan.
posted by dragonsi55 (10 comments total)

"The decisions did not get made that should have been... At the end of the day, you have to hold the president responsible... I don't think he realized the extent of the opposition within his own administration, and the disloyalty."

Excuse me? The problem was that the President didn't realize there was disloyalty in the ranks? Thus implying that the problem was insufficient loyalty to ideology inside the Bush White House?

Fuck these idiots. Perle and company would love to spin this as some sort of tragic failure to execute, but the plan they lovingly nurtured for years was the problem. It was pure hubris, asinine presumptuousness, and the best that can be said is that a profoundly gifted and competent president could've made it less disastrous.
posted by verb at 4:18 PM on February 16, 2007

"The levels of brutality that we've seen are truly horrifying, and I have to say, I underestimated the depravity," Perle says

So - the other side didn't play nice during our war. Gee, who could have predicted that? Besides any of several hundred thousand actual war veterans, I mean. The PNAC idiots deserve every bad thing that happens to them. I don't want their remorse. I want them to realize they are incompetent in foreign policy, to shut up, and to disappear.
posted by Kirth Gerson at 4:25 PM on February 16, 2007

That's a misleading post unfortunately, you are framing what they said. I also swear this was already covered back before the election.
posted by bhouston at 4:25 PM on February 16, 2007

It wasn't derailed into situation where all they are doing is funneling money into Govt. contractors, because that was their goal in the first place. The administration and Neocons in general are a bunch of industry insiders who wanted to fuel their own buddies at the expense of the poor men and woman of the military and the citizens of Iraq. What a sad, sad, sad situation and the voters of the country should be ashamed of themselves for falling for such a scam.
posted by GavinR at 4:25 PM on February 16, 2007

Snakes shouldn't complain when the scorpion stings them.
posted by edgeways at 4:25 PM on February 16, 2007

Here is the original post of this on MetaFilter.
posted by bhouston at 4:28 PM on February 16, 2007

They drank the Kool-Aid. The only sad fact is that Jim Jones wasn't ladling it into their cups. Fuck them nine ways from Sunday.
posted by docpops at 4:36 PM on February 16, 2007 [1 favorite]

verb - no kidding. This was Bush's "Defining Moment."

What you all should take away from this guy Pearle — the first rat (and I MEAN two faced sniveling rat) to leave a crippled sinking ship — is that he is now tasked as set dresser for the deck of the Titanic.

The Neos are going to do their damnedest to pass this flaming cluster fuck on to anybody else. And by implication that "anybody else" will by default be the aforementioned "disloyal" (read "unpatriotic") party. Thus it will be their fault. "What you couldn't win this awesome war we handed you!? It must be your fault then! WE would have won it but people like you kept fucking up the plan!"

Nifty party trick.
posted by tkchrist at 5:06 PM on February 16, 2007

bhouston's note of an earlier post is correct, with a slightly different url, so I unfortunately didn't catch it on the search.

The article also goes into details on the fallout from the release of parts of the story before the election, which made some people unhappy.
posted by dragonsi55 at 5:33 PM on February 16, 2007

VanityFairFilter: the article on SAIC is fascinating.
posted by homunculus at 6:55 PM on February 16, 2007