Richard Perle: The Price of Arrogance?

Richard Perle: The Price of Arrogance?

Richard Perle: The Price of Arrogance?

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So, Richard Perle–a man whose arrogance knows no limits, whose countless op-eds and television appearances about the imminent threat Iraq posed to the US deceived the American people—has now admitted that he and his neocon cabal underestimated the disastrous consequences of poor postwar planning.

In a recent interview with the French newspaper Le Figaro, the NeoCon Prince of Darkness acknowledges, “Our main mistake, in my opinion, is that we haven’t succeeded in working closely with Iraqis before the war so that an Iraqi opposition could have been able to immediately take the matter in hand.”

But wasn’t it the Bush Administration‘s over-reliance on the claims of the self-interested exiled Iraqi opposition (and its handmaidens on the Pentagon’s Defense Policy Board), that was one of the main reasons for the US failure to anticipate the postwar crisis? As the costs of occupation soar–in both lives and dollars–shouldn’t chickenhawks like Perle be held accountable for their failures and fabrications?

After all, wasn’t Perle–along with the other faith-based warrior intellectuals at the project for the New American Century and in corporate-funded think tanks like the American Enterprise Institute–an architect of these failed policies? Isn’t it time that their colossal failure meet its just response? President Bush should ask Dick Cheney and his cabal of (failed) armchair wargamers to hit the road.

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Katrina vanden Heuvel
Editorial Director and Publisher, The Nation

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