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Prince of Darkness Denies Own Existence
Listening to neoconservative mastermind Richard Perle at the Nixon Center yesterday, there was a sense of falling down the rabbit hole.
In real life, Perle was the ideological architect of the Iraq war and of the Bush doctrine of preemptive attack. But at yesterday's forum of foreign policy intellectuals, he created a fantastic world in which:
1. Perle is not a neoconservative.
2. Neoconservatives do not exist.
3. Even if neoconservatives did exist, they certainly couldn't be blamed for the disasters of the past eight years.
"There is no such thing as a neoconservative foreign policy," Perle informed the gathering, hosted by National Interest magazine. "It is a left critique of what is believed by the commentator to be a right-wing policy."
So what about the 1996 report he co-authored that is widely seen as the cornerstone of neoconservative foreign policy? "My name was on it because I signed up for the study group," Perle explained. "I didn't approve it. I didn't read it."
Mm-hmm. And the two letters to the president, signed by Perle, giving a "moral" basis to Middle East policy and demanding military means to remove Saddam Hussein? "I don't have the letters in front of me," Perle replied.
Right. And the Bush administration National Security Strategy, enshrining the neoconservative themes of preemptive war and using American power to spread freedom? "I don't know whether President Bush ever read any of those statements," Perle maintained. "My guess is he didn't."
The Prince of Darkness -- so dubbed during his days opposing arms control in the Reagan Pentagon -- was not about to let details get in the way of his argument that "50 million conspiracy theorists have it wrong," as the subtitle of his article for National Interest put it. "I see a number of people here who believe and have expressed themselves abundantly that there is a neoconservative foreign policy and it was the policy that dominated the Bush administration, and they ascribe to it responsibility for the deplorable state of the world," Perle told the foreign policy luminaries at yesterday's lunch. "None of that is true, of course."
Of course.
He had been a leading cheerleader for the Iraq war, predicting that the effort would take few troops and last only a few days, and that Iraq would pay for its own reconstruction. Perle was chairman of Bush's Defense Policy Board -- and the president clearly took the advice of Perle and his fellow neocons. And Perle, in turn, said back then that Bush "knows exactly what he's doing."
Yesterday, however, Perle said Bush's foreign policy had "no philosophical underpinnings and certainly nothing like the demonic influence of neoconservatives that is alleged." He also took issue with the common view that neocons favored using American might to spread democratic values. "There's no documentation!" he argued. "I can't find a single example of a neoconservative supposed to have influence over the Bush administration arguing that we should impose democracy by force."
Those in the room were skeptical of Perle's efforts to recast himself as a pragmatist.
Richard Burt, who clashed with Perle in the Reagan administration, took issue with "this argument that neoconservatism maybe actually doesn't exist." He reminded Perle of the longtime rift between foreign policy realists and neoconservative interventionists. "You've got to kind of acknowledge there is a neoconservative school of thought," Burt challenged.
"I don't accept the approach, not at all," the Prince of Darkness replied.
Jacob Heilbrunn of National Interest asked Perle to square his newfound realism with the rather idealistic title of his book, "An End to Evil."
"We had a publisher who chose the title," Perle claimed, adding: "There's hardly an ideology in that book." (An excerpt: "There is no middle way for Americans: It is victory or holocaust. This book is a manual for victory.")
Regardless of the title, Heilbrunn pursued, how could so many people -- including lapsed neoconservative Francis Fukuyama -- all be so wrong about what neoconservatives represent?
"It's not surprising that a lot of people get something wrong," Perle reasoned.
At times, the Prince of Darkness turned on his questioners. Fielding a question from the Financial Times, he said that the newspaper "propagated this myth of neoconservative influence." He informed Stefan Halper of Cambridge University that "you have contributed significantly to this mythology."
"There are some 5,000 footnotes," Halper replied. "Documents that you've signed."
But documents did not deter denials. "I've never advocated attacking Iran," he said, to a few chuckles. "Regime change does not imply military force, at least not when I use the term," he said, to raised eyebrows. Accusations that neoconservatives manipulated intelligence on Iraq? "There's no truth to it." At one point, he argued that the word "neoconservative" has been used as an anti-Semitic slur, just moments after complaining that prominent figures such as Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld -- Christians both -- had been grouped in with the neoconservatives.
"I don't know that I persuaded anyone," Perle speculated when the session ended.
No worries, said the moderator. "You certainly kept us all entertained."
81 Comments so far
Show AllThe exchange as described in this article reminds me of my days as a schoolteacher when I had to deal with certain misbehaving students who would stand in the principal's office and deny their participation in disruptive events which many others had witnessed. No matter how much evidence or testimony weighed against them, they stuck to their lies.
These students almost invariably turned out to have mental and emotional problems which led them to get in trouble. It's clear to me that, in spite of his educated rhetoric, Richard Perle has the same psychological profile as those students. He has never been held accountable for his anti-social behaviors because he has served administrations who found his lunacy to be useful.
Now that he faces the possibility - however slight - of repercussions for his belligerent Zionism (another terrm whose use, he would whine, suggests anti-Semitism), his behavior corresponds perfectly with that of those troubled children with whom I had to deal.
q
I think the term is "pathological liar".
So the Project for a New American Century (PNAC - of which Perle was a member, along with most of the rest of Bush's cabinet) and it's call for a 'new Pearl Harbor' never existed?
If anyone should have been black-bagged and dragged off to suffer torture, I'm sorry, 'enhanced interrogation techniques', it is Perle and his ilk.
Didn't he spend most of the waning years of the Bush presidency hiding out in France? (And I seem to remember him agreeing with the statement calling the French people 'cheese eating surrender monkeys'...)
It is Perle and his neo-con ilk who made 9/11 possible, at the very least by allowing it to happen on purpose...
Walk in peace.
Denial is becoming a way of life in our world, especially since the denial and under-reporting of the facts of what happened on 9/11/01 and continued cover-up.
another related issue besides the denials for attacking an oil-rich nation, is this recent report by www.WorldReports.org/news
CATASTROPHIC BANKERS’ RAMP TO CONTINUE UNDER OBAMA
and what does this report say is behind the global crisis?
ROOT CAUSE OF THE GLOBAL CRISIS: THE CIA FUNDS ITSELF BY FRAUD
So, no wonder Pearle is twisting words, ideas, and truth; and without media or political intervention, our best hope is for a peoples' referendum vote to investigate the beginnings of the madness - www.nyc911initiative.org
Only truth will set us free; yet most all politicians lack honesty.
And Richard Pearle's book and statements now are just a distraction, and rip-off that hurts too much to be funny.
jonathan
<>~<>~<>~ www.FlybyNews.com ~<>~<>~<>
For life's survival in the 21st Century
Oh, this is all a bunch of left-wing conspirators agreeing with their own viewpoint. Perle was not influential in the Bush Administration, and he was not a neoconservative. Nor was anyone else. Neoconservatives don't exist outside the left-wing fearmonger paranoia worldview. In fact, they had nothing to do with encouraging a war on Iraq--there WAS no war on Iraq. Iraq, in fact does not exist. Nor was Bush ever president. Just more left-wing conspiracy theory. And Perle does not have anything to do with any of this because Perle doesn't exist either. He's merely a figment of his own imagination.
Perle's bizarre, self serving recent comments (whether merely disingenuous or downright delusional) remind me of the classic Mafia don defense strategy when facing conspiracy charges: if there is no Cosa Nostra, if there is no crime family, if it's all a sinister heirarchy concocted entirely from thin air existing only in the imagination of my overzealous accusers, then of course there is no criminal enterprize of which I could possibly be the Godfather.
Skilled criminal defense lawyers successfully ran variations on this defense theme for decades in organized crime cases. Eventually however, the feds did take down John Gotti. Persistence, good investigative leg work, and an adroit use of witness immunity protection ultimately pays off.
Like Dick Cheney and other big time neo con backroom players who ran amok with impunity during the high rolling days of the Bush regime, teflon Richard Perle better rethink his international travel plans. As Dana Millbank's article makes clear, there's a far more damning paper trail already established here, documentation already in the public domain that cannot be erased or sanctimoniously wished away, than Vito Corleone ever left behind.
Bill from Saginaw
One of the primary factors hindering the pursuit and prosecution of organized crime figures for decades was J. Edgar Hoover's absolute refusal to admit that organized crime even existed. Perle is in some "exotic" company.
q
And no one had the courage to say, "Exist? You're soaking in it!"
Of course, it's no coincidence that Hoover also denied the existence of control-top pantyhose.
· Yr Obd't Servant
I wonder if his publisher has any more books in need of an author? I wouldn't mind collecting royalties on books that I didn't write and have nothing to do with anything I believe or do.
I just wish he was saying this in front of a grand jury for war crimes. President Obama needs to prosecute these people as the criminals that they are and not sweep the choices done during the last eight years as mere "mistakes" or "casualties of war." They deliberately chose their actions. Their intentions were not without blemish. If we let them off the hook, we are saying that the United States completely lacks moral standing and ethical standards. Might makes right in the U.S. or more accurately, the electoral college makes right.
hee hee... funny, the recently passed stimulus package included amendments to the 2007 whistle blower protection act, real bad news for the malignant Perle, who along with fellow dark eminence Doug Feith enabled the theft of state secrets by Afghan heroin traffickers from the Turkish Embassy, for whom they both lobbied. These douche-bitches are sooo lucky to live here, anywhere else they'd get a well-deserved firing squad, as opposed to the Medal of Freedom bestowed on them by Bush, ugh! Gagged whistle blower Sibel Edmonds' exposé on their ignominy will hopefully soon be available as evidence against theses treasonous bastards.
As more than one Xtian preacher has asserted, "The Devil's greatest acccomplishment is to have convinced so many that He doesn't exist."
Perle is just another banally-evil war criminal, deserving of a stout rope and a short drop, desperately trying to shift attention from his acts.
As do most glib neocons, Perle lives in his own little Wonderland. In ancient Rome he might well have asked, "Quid, me anxius sum?" All those who read MAD magazine know what that means! Denial has been a Way of Life for Republicans and Conservatives ever since the Reagan administration or even the earlier Nixon years.
And all those bad things that happened in Germany were not done by the Nazis. There are/were no Nazis in Germany, it was all the fault of the Eskimos. Those Eskimos did all those killings.
Arrest, prosecute, convict execute, cremate.
NUREMBERG II 2009
Poor man. Still trying to maintain that "Reality is what I say it is" thing.
I'm sure there is a DSM IV (rev) designation for this sort of thing, along with meds recommendations.
Fast forward to a time not so far distant in the short lifespan of man. Graves in cemeteries around the country will have markers with the names Richard Perle, Dick Cheney, George Bush, and all the rest who've left their bloody marks upon the world, joining those like Hitler, Stalin, and others who'd spilled so much blood and brought fear to the hearts of so many.
But there will be many more between now and that not so far distant time in the short lifespan of man who'll shed more blood, and bring more fear to the hearts of many.
Such is life.
Another zionist in the midst of revising history and living in an alternate reality.
he is one of the american uber zionists.this guy is amazing. he beat the attack drums for iraq, he is a major member of PNAC, and AIPAC. he even said [no member of congress gets elected or reelected without AIPAC, formerly known as the AMERICAN ZIONIST COUNCIL. he went to the kurds and tried to make separate oil deals. how many passports does he carry?
Look up the phrase "load of crap" in the dictionary and you'll see Richard Perle's picture!
Richard Perle has for years looked like a man dying from a strange form of cancer that does not cause him to lose weight. Actually, I think that's what's happening to the United States.
LOL That is rather apt!
If you saw the video of this, you had to be taken back to the days when Nixon got the helicopter leaving the White House. The demeanor of the man was rather sad even pathetic. I'd say that he is a broken man. Is it possible for a person to grieve his own life?
Dafoe
Reminds me of a boss who sent me memos to do something and i would start the process of organizing men money and machines so to speak , report on progress and get the reply that this is not what I meant at which i would reply waving the email, this is what you said, but that is not what I meant. Must have gone to the same school as Herr Perle, Mr Donowrong. The trick is to ignore him or put him under the daily spotlight, get the IRS to audit him using a 1000 mesh screen.
This is the GOP with its supply of cabinet appointees that all hibernate under rocks, awaiting the next repugnant presdent.. What do you expect from a pig but a grunt.
"What do you expect from a pig but a grunt."
And lipstick.....
Never criticize a man until you've walked a mile in their moccasins - Native American proverb.
Wow, Perle's hubris and state of denial must set world records!
I have one response: The PNAC "Statement of Principles", authored and signed by among other stars, Perle.
http://newamericancentury.org/statementofprinciples.htm
The following wiki entry is a good read on neoconservative ideology.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bush_Doctrine
Orwell would be cheering. Bravo! Bravo!
Never criticize a man until you've walked a mile in their moccasins - Native American proverb.
WTF; the paper trail is there, he can deny all he wants. he is evil.
This infamous Zionist got Bush and his conservative war profiteer's attention because he is a reliable warmonger. "Prince of Darkness" sounds too cool for this piece of shit.
Whether one calls them neo-cons, neo-liberals, or blurs the definition of conservatives by pointing out that conservatives in Australia are the Liberal Party, one thing is clear, they are all modern conservatives.
"The modern conservative is engaged in one of man's oldest exercises in moral philosophy; that is, the search for a superior moral justification for selfishness."
John Kenneth Galbraith
"War remains the decisive human failure."
John Kenneth Galbraith
"Few can believe that suffering, especially by others, is in vain. Anything that is disagreeable must surely have beneficial economic effects."
John Kenneth Galbraith
"Liberalism is, I think, resurgent. One reason is that more and more people are so painfully aware of the alternative."
John Kenneth Galbraith
If anyone did more to damage our country than Dick Cheney, it was this man.
If Cheney was Dick Vader, Richard Pearle was indeed the Emperor.
May they both say hello to Cerberus soon.
The emperor here is really Senator Lieberman.
Put a stake to his heart. (Wear plenty of garlic though) This rough beast will keep on coming back...
"The process of deception has to be conscious, or it would not be carried out with sufficient precision, but it also has to be unconscious, or it would bring with it a feeling of falsity and hence of guilt.... To tell deliberate lies while genuinely believing in them, to forget any fact that has become inconvenient, and then, when it becomes necessary again, to draw it back from oblivion for just so long as it is needed, to deny the existence of objective reality and all the while to take account of the reality which one denies — all this is indispensably necessary." George Orwell, 1984
Perle owns a home in Provence, France, where the late Godmother of the Neocons, Jeanne Kirkpatrick, was his neighbor. Perhaps this home is his ace-in-the-hole, since France does not extradite defendants in capital cases to face death penalty eligible charges.
look at who just flew in. kirkpatrick another name from the past, present and future. their damage to the world will be everlasting.
This is so ridiculous that it belongs in the onion.
Therapists willing to apply to treat The Prince of Darkness and Utter Lunacy may apply to Richard Perle, 'scholar," c/o The American Enterprise Institute (which is in no way neconservative in any way whatsoever because there is no such thing anyway,) at www.aei.org.
Warning: "enhanced therapy techniques" may be required due to the level of insanity present in patient.
Just one more of the cowardly lice that need to be cracked between the People's thumbnails.
In the curiously perverse mindset of neocondom Perle is absolutely correct. As a disciple of the Univ. of Chicago's infamous professor Leo Strauss, Richard Perle (along with the likes of Wolfowitz, Kristol, and other travelers to that moral dark side) is just doing what comes naturally.
He is creating and then subsequently destroying a lying myth that he neither now nor ever truly believed and valildating such mythic creation and destruction as being for the good of controlling the masses of "little people" through their fears (conveniently manufactured and sold to them by Perle and others of hiis ilk). Perle is amorality incarnate.
Poet
Poet, you are so right in saying that "Perle is amorality incarnate."
The dude is a really twisted sort -- basically, a sociopath.
all the straussians and their world view theoretical thinking, has encouraged our nation building hubris. if you did not like the neocons, you will hate the neolibs, and their ziocon travelers.
Great comment....
Loved "Perle is amorality incarnate".
For Richard Perle's next trick, he will spontaneously combust, then reappear as a catholic school girl sporting white knee highs and a plaid skirt.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
"I know not with what weapons World War III will be fought, but World War IV will be fought with sticks and stones.", Albert Einstein.
Ed note: white phosphorous, dense metal super weapons, nuclear stick-up, missile defense, bailouts and propaganda!!
FD; unfortunately his next trick will be to help holbrooke balkanize eurasia. neocon, neolib, ziocon, same paymaster. and no! they are not america firsters. i would like a passport check on all of them. how many do they carry?
What a sick bastard!
ABEND; i hope that double post was intentional, because it is worth repeating. what a sick bastard.
Yup, he is a sick bastard. Like many (most?) CEO's of large corporations and many of our representatives in Washington, he is a bona fide psychopath. Don't believe it? - look it up.
What a sick bastard!
The deniers are denying their denials.
How surprising.
Maybe they're trying to make the "known knowns" become "unknown unknowns". Who knows?
ULLERN; lol. that sounds like rummy, "known knowns---unknown knowns---. if it were not so sad, and disgraceful. imagine rummy and the prince in the witness stand with their denials and mumbo jumbo. oh! lets add cheney to this snl skit. there is a place for these people, a very dark, cold place.
Existence doesn't exist!...and so we should prosecute Perle and punish him to the full extent of the law and he won't need to worry because neither he nor the law nor us exist! We will be the only ones who will be happy because we erroneously believe this all exists! If Bush and Cheney and thier criminal cabal believes any of this exists then they should REALLY be worried!!! If JUSTICE exists then perhaps Obama could prove that it does by prosecuting the Bush/Cheney criminal cabal for their manifold crimes , if he doesn't demonstrate that justice exists then we who believe we exist will begin to doubt the existence of justice and also Obamas belief that justice exists!!!! I wish it were more simple! Maybe it is!
CQ from Maine
Suppose Nazi Germany was a democracy. And say, in 1945, the Nazi's lost the election and instead of being tried and hung at Nuremberg for war crimes they simply had to explain themselves. Would it have looked like this? Let's investigate. Let's indict these bastards. Let's see the evidence. Let Perle try to run that bullshit from the witness box. Get the picture?
Don't get me wrong, I'm not suggesting Bush and Perle and the neocons are Nazis. Quite the contrary. Some of their families suffered mightily under the Nazis. And I sympathize with that. But bullshit is bullshit. If they had been successful at anything Perle would have a book out: How neoconservative foreign policy saved Bush and America. Right?
"I don't know whether President Bush ever read any of those statements," Perle maintained. "My guess is he didn't."
I can believe that much at least.