Kristol is a slimeball, and was wrong about nearly everything during the Bush years. The NYT could easily find a better conservative columnist in their collective pocket lint.

Now there's a cheerful story. One of the most galling things about the Right Wing is that they fail upwards. Or at least they used to. Looking around at the media stars of the Right Wing was like a referendum on who got Iraq wrong, President Bush wrong, the economy wrong, and the Constitution wrong.
The idea that one of the leaders of the Wrong - one of the cheerleaders for an administration that has led America to the brink of collapse - could be rewarded with a column in the New York Times, drove me a little nuts.

While we're on the subject, I've read so many comments from Right Wing supporters who insisted it was unpatriotic to question the NSA spy program. "If Osama bin Ladin is calling a terrorist cell in America, then damn it, we ought to know about it." It's the type of thing Bill Kristol used to say all the time.

So what do you say now that it turns out the NSA was listening to everybody in America, and focusing on journalists? That's why we can't turn over our freedoms - not even just a little bit. As soon as the government gets them, they lie to us and abuse their power. Sound familiar?

One little anecdote from this sorry chapter: The NSA whistleblower said for kicks they would sometimes listen to lonely soldiers talking dirty with their spouses back in the States. Way to support the troops. Good riddance, Bill Kristol.

Now Billy Kristol's knuckles might heal. Neanderthals like him get carpet burns on their knuckles so easily.Might it be called "Turf Knuckles"?

Nice rant, Bill. Pretty much completely wrong on every point, but nice rant.

Not really a surprise. Kristol is Chairman of "The Project for the New American Century" a neo-con "educational" (propaganda?) organization.

http://www.newamericancentury.org/

Recently I read somewhere that Kristol had renewed or revived the PNAC website, so I checked it out. It had a "Signatories" link listing people who supported the June 3, 1997 Statement of Principles. The signatories included: Richard B. Cheney, Charles Krauthammer, William Kristol, I. Lewis Libby, Richard N. Perle, Daniel Pipes, Donald Rumsfeld and Paul Wolfowitz. I can't find the link now although perhaps it was removed because it was old.

A while back under a different post, "ecohuman" recommended Adam Curtis' "The Power of Nightmares" BBC series (Thank you, ecohuman). I second the recommendation. You can check it out from the public library. It consists of three bonus DVD's to three issues of a DVD magazine series called Wholphin. It will explain what PNAC is really about and there are interviews with most of the men on the list above.

Kristol is more than slimy, he's sinister.

Whoa, nice rant, Bill. Doesn't have much to do with Kristol, but a good rant nonetheless.

I hope you can recall some of that fire and brimstone about violation of privacy when Kulongowski pushes his plan to put GPS's in all our cars. Oh, snap....

Butch,
You're saying the NSA whistleblower is making all this up?
Just because George could never admit he was wrong, doesn't mean his supporters have to take that route.

Geez,

I go away for months and come back to Billy McD and his semi-self-congratulatory ennui.

...and BUSH, STILL!

I guess one does hang onto one's dreams.

"You're saying the NSA whistleblower is making all this up?"

If the 'whistleblower' is Russel Tice, yes. The guy was fired from the NSA after a psych determined he had psychotic paranoia. This was after he'd been demoted to pumping gas and moving furniture. Find me a 'whistleblower' that doesn't have an axe to grind.

"The guy was fired from the NSA after a psych determined he had psychotic paranoia."

Yes, because well all know that government tells the public the truth when an employee stumbles into something they shouldn't have. What were they gonna say, "Mr. Tice was fired for finding an illegal secret spy program?"

"Find me a 'whistleblower' that doesn't have an axe to grind."

You would to if your character was the target of assignation on a daily basis.

Butch,
You're slipping. Your proper answer should be, "I welcome any surveillance by my government because they're keeping me safe. Besides, I haven't done anything wrong."
Get with the program, and I do mean program.

As far as monitoring the Neo-Cons, I think it's too soon to let all that go.

The thing I liked the least about Sam Adams's lying and cover-up is how much it reminded me of the Bush administration's lying and cover-ups.

Bill, did you also know that Russell Tice was formerly commended for his intel work on Iraq? That alone should be enough for you to doubt anything he says. I wonder why Keith Olberman never asked him about that?

So lets see here....Russell Tice: primary achievement at NSA was his Iraq intel, accuses co-worker of spying for China and is subsequently demoted to pumping gas, let go altogether when he's found to be a psycho, now an unimpeachable whistleblower. ok.

PS - your man Obama voted FOR the NSA wiretapping bill, didn't he?

Thank God. Maybe I will hear so much less from him that I won't jump every time someone says his name on the radio/TV and wonder if my father (Bill Chrystal) took a walk on the dark side.

I hope you can recall some of that fire and brimstone about violation of privacy when Kulongowski pushes his plan to put GPS's in all our cars.

Why worry about your car?

Bill, did you also know that Russell Tice was formerly commended for his intel work on Iraq?

Typical of smear campaigns, this is incomplete and misleading information. Tice was commended for intelligence work on Iraq but you don't specify what that intelligence consisted of, implying that it was something to do with the false statements of the Bush administration leading up to the war and ignoring the possibility that it might have been accurate information of some sort. Fake WMD reports weren't the only intel reports coming out of Iraq in the decade after the Gulf War.

Your case is even weaker if his intel from Iraq was cooked for the administration and he was commended for it, because then he's got insider status and knows that the administration was lying.

Bill McDonald:
I've read so many comments from Right Wing supporters who insisted it was unpatriotic to question the NSA spy program. "If Osama bin Ladin is calling a terrorist cell in America, then damn it, we ought to know about it."

So you would rather have a terrorist attack succeed than have NSA listening to calls into or out of this country? I'd say that verges on "unpatriotic" but scores a direct hit on "lacks common sense."

While it might please you to have us fight the terrorists with one hand tied behind our back, I'm sure that most Americans would not agree with you.

While it might please you to have us fight the terrorists with one hand tied behind our back, I'm sure that most Americans would not agree with you.

Well, first Bill would have to acknowledge that we deserve to fight against terrorists since, of course, WE created them. Not sanctimonious Bill, of course, but the usual suspects - he's got the well-worn list - from whom all evils originate.

It's just so simple.

cc:
Well, first Bill would have to acknowledge that we deserve to fight against terrorists since, of course, WE created them.

Which I assume is a reference to how we helped Afghanis defeat and expel the Russians in the 1980's?

I would turn that around and say that those who evolved into the Taliban showed themselves to be ungrateful scumbags by turning on those who had helped them.

I'm pleased to see Obama getting ready to go after them.

If the NSA has to listen to our phone calls, then the terrorists have succeeded.

My point here is that when the right wing characterized the NSA program they did it one way. Now we have a 20-year NSA employee who says it's another.
It always irked me how easily the right wing bought every little thing Bush fed them.
It had more the characteristics of a religious cult than reasonable people making rational opinions.
Terrorism should be fought on the level it deserves - not by elevating it to superstar status as the primary foreign policy objective of America.
The War on Terror was a hoax designed to get people here to give up there freedoms willingly. It wasn't designed to end terrorism, and it wasn't designed to catch Osama which is why he just released his Bush farewell tape.
It was designed as cover to go into Iraq.
Neo-Cons like Bill Kristol are leading America around like a pet goat.

"... I assume is a reference to how we helped Afghanis ...."

No, an unlikely assumption. Probably and currently it might refer to The newest fear-mongering campaign from the Right and the media, Glenn Greenwald, Jan. 23, 2009.

The latest fear-mongering campaign in the U.S. -- this one devoted to scaring Americans that they will be slaughtered if Guantanamo is closed ....

UPDATE: ... the February 26, 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center ... took place just seven weeks after Bill Clinton was inaugurated, but after that attack -- to use the Beltway parlance -- Clinton kept us safe, for the rest of his presidency. No more foreign Terrorist attacks on the Homeland. It wasn't until Clinton left the Oval Office and George Bush became President were Islamic Terrorists able to strike the Homeland again.

"... have a terrorist attack succeed"; "... we deserve to fight against terrorists since, of course, WE created ... from whom all evils originate"; "... those who evolved into the Taliban showed themselves to be ungrateful .... [G]o after them."

Terrorists 'R' US. Get on the case.

The Truth behind 9/11: Who Is Osama Bin Laden? - At 11am, on the morning of 9/11, the Bush administration had announced that Osama was behind the attacks, by Michel Chossudovsky, Global Research, September 11, 2008.

... 9/11. On the following day, the "war on terrorism" had been launched. The media disinformation campaign went into full gear.

The decision to launch a war and send troops to Afghanistan had been taken well in advance of 9/11. The "terrorist, massive, casualty-producing event" as it was later described by CentCom Commander General Tommy Franks, served to galvanize public opinion in support of a war agenda which was already in its final planning stage.

... accepted and upheld at face value as a legitimate response to 9/11, without examining the fact that Washington had not only supported the "Islamic terror network", it was also instrumental in the installation of the Taliban government in 1996.

The MYTH of the "outside enemy" and the threat of "Islamic terrorists" was the cornerstone of the Bush adminstration’s military doctrine, used as a pretext ....

Amply documented but rarely mentioned by the mainstream media, Al Qaeda was a creation of the CIA going back to the Soviet-Afghan war. This was a known fact, corroborated by numerous sources including official documents of the US Congress. The intelligence community had time and again acknowledged that they had indeed supported Osama bin Laden, but [MYTH] that in the wake of the Cold War: "he turned against us".

After 9/11, the campaign of media DISinformation served not only to drown the truth but also to kill much of the historical evidence on how this illusive "outside enemy" had been fabricated ....

Once a republiCON always a republiCON.

BTW, I seem to recall you on the right demanding allegiance to the President and any decision he made. I do expect you to do the same now as well. You wouldn't want to be unpatriotic would you?

Again, I recommend "The Power of Nightmares" a documentary series by Adam Curtis.

It exposes how the paranoid fantasies of Leo Strauss' intellectual progeny, now known as Neocons, became insinuated in and came to dominate our foreign policy and now drive the counterterrorism policies and industry in our country.

It covers the Cold War, the War in Afghanistan and the War in Iraq, among other things.

I think what we're forgetting here isn't just that Kristol was a sleaze. He was an even worse writer. If I wanted to bore myself with a sanctimonious, humorless tirade against the writer's perceived enemies that makes everyone who reads said tirade to switch sides, I'd read a "This Modern World" comic strip.

Todd Hawes:
If the NSA has to listen to our phone calls, then the terrorists have succeeded.

The terrorists' definition of success is stuffing us all into a burkah or killing us. If we fight them cleverly, we will win and they will have failed.

Bill McDonald:
The War on Terror was a hoax designed to get people here to give up there freedoms willingly. It wasn't designed to end terrorism, and it wasn't designed to catch Osama which is why he just released his Bush farewell tape.
It was designed as cover to go into Iraq.
Neo-Cons like Bill Kristol are leading America around like a pet goat.

Well, that's some conspiracy theory you've got there.

It seems to me that 9/11 was not a "hoax." What we did in response to 9/11 sure looked to me like an appropriate response to the threat posed by terrorism. I've never seen any credible evidence that would support your view of what happened.

Tenskwatawa:
(a whole lot of conspiracy theories)

If you're going to drop into that conspiracy theory mode of thinking, all I can tell you is that you're going to make that trip by yourself. I've got better things to do in life.

mp97303:
BTW, I seem to recall you on the right demanding allegiance to the President and any decision he made. I do expect you to do the same now as well. You wouldn't want to be unpatriotic would you?

But isn't "dissent the highest form of patriotism?" :-)

It's too late and I think you know it. The Neo-Con movement has been exposed for what it really was: A systemic policy of regime change, that came out of the gates and immediately got bogged down in the sands of Iraq.
In the darkest hours of the last 8 years, I just hoped that the truth would be recorded by historians. I believe that is taking place. This retro-spin effort to connect Iraq with 9/11 is stunningly pathetic.
The Neo-Cons were the hot date who came courting and a lot of you went along to the prom.
Well, it has dumped you now, yet you're still telling your friends that it isn't over. Every night you wait on the porch for Cheney and Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz to come back. They're not coming back. It's time for the Conservative Movement to take off the Bush corsage and try and grow up.

Bill McDonald:
It's too late and I think you know it.

I don't have a "Bush corsage." Bush massively screwed up the Iraq war until very late in the game when he partially retrieved it with "the surge." It took Bush way too long to realize things there were messed up (a failing he also exhibited during Katrina).

I would remind you that many Democrats believed in the war on terror policies during the first few years after 9/11. I remember what it felt like in that time. I remember believing it was quite likely that Saddam was well on his way to nukes, as we found out he had been (unbeknown to anyone) after the first Gulf War (google "iraq calutron" and see what you find).

Your caricature of those days is nothing like what I remember. There's nothing "too late" about a commitment to protecting the country, despite vociferous efforts from some to denigrate that orientation as "fear" or a conspiracy of some sort.

A lot of the Democrats in Congress are "blue dog" Democrats. You're going to have a hard time getting them to go in the direction you seem to be advocating.

"What we did in response to 9/11 sure looked to me like an appropriate response to the threat posed by terrorism."

Once you wrote that, Kraznaya, I realized we weren't going to agree. I think it's too late for the Neo-Cons. Everything they touched went bad, and they are now seen as war criminals by much of the world. They are finished or at least I hope so.
That would mean we still have a chance to save America.

The year 2003 was not the first time in recent history that the Neo-Cons persuaded officials in the executive branch to ignore CIA intelligence reports which happened to be correct.

Its obvious from some of the posts above that there are people who want to wrap themselves in the American flag as a shield against the fact that their own government has misled them, not just for years but for decades.

The truth is heartbreaking for those of us who also love our country. But that's no reason to hide from the truth.

Bill McDonald:
Once you wrote that, Kraznaya, I realized we weren't going to agree.

No, probably not. I wonder what the basis of that is? I presume you're not a bad person, and I think I'm not either. But we see the world so differently.

It seems to me that "your side" refuses to acknowledge danger. You apparently see "my side" as dupes of a conspiracy.

If Obama's rhetoric about bringing us all together has got any chance of coming true, there's going to need to be communication across this line, whatever it is.

By the way, I've been misspelling my own name. It's "Krasnaya", not Kraznaya.

Here's a quote from an American President that captures what I feel about the War on Terror:

"As for our common defense, we reject as false the choice between our safety and our ideals.

Our founding fathers faced with perils that we can scarcely imagine, drafted a charter to assure the rule of law and the rights of man, a charter expanded by the blood of generations.

Those ideals still light the world, and we will not give them up for expedience's sake." -President Barack Obama, 1-20-09

Bill McDonald:
"As for our common defense, we reject as false the choice between our safety and our ideals."

There's never a choice? What would you do in one of those "ticking bomb" scenarios? Can you give me an honest answer?

Suppose there's a nuke about to go off in Portland and we catch one of the terrorists, but he refuses to say where the bomb is? Extract the information? Or let a few million innocent people get incinerated?

What would you choose? The clock is ticking.

There's a huge difference between "torture is always wrong" and "torture is almost always wrong." I agree with the second, but definitely not the first.

If that exact scenario ever happens, I think you know what the response would be, but it would be illegal, and that's a hell of a lot different from legalizing torture - which is what they tried to do here.
These scenarios always start with a terrorist who announces he has a bomb but he's not going to tell us where unless we torture him.
What really happens is we have no idea who the terrorists are so we end up torturing in great numbers and destroying what we stand for.
What the right never thinks about is the fact that their actions have greatly increased the numbers of people in the world who would love to hurt us. The leaders know it, but they don't care. I'm sure the taxi cab driver who was picked up for no reason and tortured to death by the US, has a family who would love to hurt us. Can you blame them? The War on Terror is not about making you safer. That's the part people don't seem to get.
Here's a ticking clock question for you: If the War on Terror generates more terrorists than it kills is it a good idea?

Bill McDonald:
If that exact scenario ever happens, I think you know what the response would be, but it would be illegal, and that's a hell of a lot different from legalizing torture - which is what they tried to do here.

Hmmm... It sounds to me like you are implicitly, and with great circumspection, saying that you would extract the information you needed whatever it took. Which means we agree about that.

In what sense would that be illegal? Would you want to prosecute the interrogator who saved those millions of lives?

What really happens is we have no idea who the terrorists are so we end up torturing in great numbers and destroying what we stand for.

I have no sympathy for incompetence, including incompetence such as you describe. Anyone who did what you're describing is an idiot, like (for instance) those morons who perpetrated the events at Abu Ghraib.

But I don't think you can paint the people who waterboarded Khalid Sheikh Mohammad with that brush. Extracting information from the scumbag who planned 9/11? I'd be proud to do it myself. And if "virtuous" fools attempted to put those interrogators on trial for "crimes against humanity" or some such, I'd volunteer for the jury in a heartbeat so that I could teach them a personal lesson in jury nullification.

What the right never thinks about is the fact that their actions have greatly increased the numbers of people in the world who would love to hurt us.

What the left never seems to think about is that intimidation can be a useful tool when dealing with terrorists. Dr. Fadl, one of the leading thinkers of the Islamist movement, recently disavowed terrorist violence, of which he was formerly an advocate. He was quoted as saying, "What good is it if we destroy one of their buildings and they respond by destroying one of our countries?"

The War on Terror is not about making you safer. That's the part people don't seem to get.

I don't "get it" because I don't agree with it. I feel a lot safer because we overthrew the Taliban in Afghanistan. I feel a lot safer because bin Laden is running from cave to cave, hiding from Predators, instead of planning his next attack on us.

Here's a ticking clock question for you: If the War on Terror generates more terrorists than it kills is it a good idea?

That's a complicated question. If we kill the effective ones, and generate angry but ineffective replacements, then it might be good. If we increase the intimidation level much higher than the anger level, it might be good. And I'm not even an expert in this. Who knows what other factors may be at play here? My bottom line answer to you is that I don't think I have either the information or the expertise to accurately evaluate the situation in those terms.

We haven't had another terrorist attack on the homeland since 9/11. That's a good thing. Are you sure that the policies you're opposed to didn't contribute to that success?

"We haven't had another terrorist attack on the homeland since 9/11. That's a good thing. Are you sure that the policies you're opposed to didn't contribute to that success?"

Maybe because we're in Iraq and it's closer for the terrorists to just go there and kill Americans.

Mike:
Maybe because we're in Iraq and it's closer for the terrorists to just go there and kill Americans.

Would you rather be fighting them there, or here?

It seems to me that you just made a point in favor of our going into Iraq.