You have to give one thing to Dick Cheney, the man has balls but more on that shortly. The ongoing bedlam in Iraq courtesy of militant Islamic group ISIS – a sudden arrival so convenient that it is practically too good to be true for the war machine and just maybe it is – has provided the architects of the “Shock and Awe” attack and invasion the opportunity to take their bows and trash Barack Obama over their own bloody mess in Iraq. There is of course the preening fiend William Kristol and his Cheshire cat smirk, old blood and guts John McCain cranking up the demagoguery, Senator Lindsey Graham wailing about another 9/11 coming from Iraq and Syria as well as the usual suspects but they are joined by a pageant of war party alumni right out of 2003 gathered together again for a reunion tour.

There is former Iraq envoy L. Paul Bremer shamelessly invoking the war dead to justify sending in even more cannon fodder for Iraq War III even though he was a key driver for dismantlingthe Iraqi army giving way to the forces that have been allegedly overrun by ISIS. Then there is Douglas Feith a man once affectionately tabbed by former CENTCOM boss General Tommy Franks as “the f*cking stupidest guy on the face of the earth” who is quoted in a Politico piecesaying that “This is the education of Barack Obama, but it’s coming at a very high cost to the Syrian people to the Iraqi people [and] to the American national interest” – in making the case for re-engagement and escalation. And who could forget Paul Wolfowitz, he of the “Wolfowitz Doctrine” and comb-sucker extraordinaire advocating for more war as well as dodging of any blame. Joining the old gang in the media is the disgraced former New York Times reporter Judith Miller whose departure didn’t stop the “gray lady” from pimping violence such is in the audacious recent column that “The Lack of Major Wars May Be Hurting Economic Growth” and a glowing hagiography about PNAC founding member Robert Kagan, husband of Victoria “f*ck the EU”Nuland.

People are buying it too, just like they got suckered by the original con job by the Bush minions and their bullshit conjecture about smoking guns as mushroom clouds, aluminum tubes and Saddam Hussein’s yellow cake uranium. The renewed gullibility is not surprising in that we live in the land of the great star-spangled sh*t sandwich that never lacks for hordes of suckers lining up to take a bite. The neocons may be everywhere this week, but none quite carry the clout of former Vice President Richard B. Cheney, a man who were he to live in a land where justice reigned would long ago have been swinging from the end of a rope just like Saddam did.

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