I just wanted to clarify something. In this post, I referred to the neocon rats deserting a sinking ship. I haven't read the complete article. Frankly I can't stomach too much of any of these guys, particularly Richard Perle. But make no mistake. While they are ripping apart Dubya, they are going into revisionist mode. It isn't that their idea of spreading Democracy to Iraq was wrong, it was that Dubya was incompetent in carrying out the plan.

We all agree Dubya has blown it (somehow, those words don't seem to convey to actually level of just how badly he's blown it), even the neocons. But like after Vietnam, the mantra on the right in discussing the loss in Iraq will be that we didn't do enough, not that we shouldn't have gone invaded in the first place. You know the arguments, "hey, if we'd have just used nukes, we would have won walking away". I think Kevin Drum has a good take on it:

It's worth saying very plainly what's going on here: the neocons are using these interviews to make the case that neoconservatism is in no way to blame for the disaster in Iraq. If they had been in charge things would have been different.

This baby needs to be strangled in its crib.[my emphasis, emphatically!] The 1997 "Statement of Principles" of the Project for a New American Century, the neocon Bible, was signed by, among others, Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, Paul Wolfowitz, Zalmay Khalilzad, Scooter Libby, and Elliot Abrams. All of these men were deeply involved in the formulation, planning, and execution of the Iraq war. The neocon creed was part and parcel of every move they made.

Idiots like Perle are simply scrambling to protect their creds for future consultant contracts and pundit appearances. It's gratifying to see these rats scrambling. It's not gratifying to look at the governmental, cultural, economic and human landscape to see the carnage that it's taken to get people to wake up, just a little bit. And make no mistake, any Democratic victories in these midterms are only a blip on the screen in terms of the overall strategic battle for America.