Henry Kissinger (Nixon's Secretary of State)
James Baker (George H.W. Bush's Secretary of State)
George Shultz (Reagan's Secretary of State)
Richard Williamson (George W. Bush's Assistant Secretary of State)
Cofer Black (former CIA official, former vice president of Blackwater International)
Eliot Cohen (George W. Bush's State Department official)
Paula Dobriansky (George W. Bush's State Department official)
John Bolton (George W. Bush's former UN ambassador)
John Lehman (Reagan's Secretary of the Navy)
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10000872396390443295404577543371831603292.html?mod=googlenews_wsj
Not listed in the Journal article are the following:
Michael Hayden (former NSA head...warrantless wiretapping)
Michael Chertoff (Bush's Homeland security sec.
Other articles on the same:
snip...
There is John Lehman, the Secretary of the Navy in the Reagan administration, who sources say is a lead actor in the Romney cast. Then there are Michael Chertoff and Michael Hayden, the Homeland Security secretary and CIA director who both served under President George W. Bush. Two former GOP senators, Norm Coleman of Minnesota and Jim Talent of Missouri, also are on Romney's team.
The supporting cast is also composed of Washington's security and foreign policy veterans: Eric Edleman and Dov Zakheim, who held high-level Pentagon posts under the younger Bush. Zakheim's son, Roger, a senior staffer on the House Armed Services Committee, is also assisting Romney, along with Dan Senor and Megan O'Sullivan, who emerged as major players during the Iraq war.
"The first impression you get is the campaign has rounded up the usual suspects," says one D.C. insider who has advised Republican and Democratic administration on security and foreign policy issues. "There are a number of people who are simply not surprises and have served in a lot of senior positions over the years."
Several Romney advisers—all requested anonymity—say the campaign largely focused on domestic and economic issues during the rough-and-tumble GOP primary season that was tougher than the former Massachusetts governor and his senior aides expected. For that reason, the advisers say the presumptive Republican nominee's policy prescriptions on many major global issues are still a work in progress.
more....
http://www.usnews.com/news/articles/2012/04/27/romneys-foreign-policy-players-draw-from-elder-bushs-bench
snip...
Romney is loath to mention Bush on the campaign trail, for obvious reasons, but today they sound like ideological soul mates on foreign policy. Listening to Romney, you’d never know that Bush left office bogged down by two unpopular wars that cost America dearly in blood and treasure. Of Romney’s forty identified foreign policy advisers, more than 70 percent worked for Bush. Many hail from the neoconservative wing of the party, were enthusiastic backers of the Iraq War and are proponents of a US or Israeli attack on Iran. Christopher Preble, a foreign policy expert at the Cato Institute, says, “Romney’s likely to be in the mold of George W. Bush when it comes to foreign policy if he were elected.” On some key issues, like Iran, Romney and his team are to the right of Bush. Romney’s embrace of the neoconservative cause—even if done cynically to woo the right—could turn into a policy nightmare if he becomes president.
If we take the candidate at his word, a Romney presidency would move toward war against Iran; closely align Washington with the Israeli right; leave troops in Afghanistan at least until 2014 and refuse to negotiate with the Taliban; reset the Obama administration’s “reset” with Russia; and pursue a Reagan-like military buildup at home. The Washington Monthly dubbed Romney’s foreign policy vision the “more enemies, fewer friends” doctrine, which is chillingly reminiscent of the world Obama inherited from Bush.
snip...
Bolton is one of eight Romney advisers who signed letters drafted by the Project for a New American Century, an influential neoconservative advocacy group founded in the 1990s, urging the Clinton and Bush administrations to attack Iraq. PNAC founding member Paula Dobriansky, leading advocate of Bush’s ill-fated “freedom agenda” as an official in the State Department, recently joined the Romney campaign full time. Another PNAC founder, Eliot Cohen, counselor to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice from 2007 to 2009, wrote the foreword to the Romney campaign’s foreign policy white paper, which was titled, perhaps not coincidentally, “An American Century.” Cohen was a tutor to Bush administration neocons. Following 9/11, he dubbed the war on terror “World War IV,” arguing that Iraq, being an “obvious candidate, having not only helped Al Qaeda, but…developed weapons of mass destruction,” should be its center. In 2009 Cohen urged the Obama administration to “actively seek the overthrow” of Iran’s government.
snip...
Romney’s team is notable for including Bush aides tarnished by the Iraq fiasco: Robert Joseph, the National Security Council official who inserted the infamous “sixteen words” in Bush’s 2003 State of the Union message claiming that Iraq had tried to buy enriched uranium from Niger; Dan Senor, former spokesman for the hapless Coalition Provisional Authority under Paul Bremer in Iraq; and Eric Edelman, a top official at the Pentagon under Bush. “I can’t name a single Romney foreign policy adviser who believes the Iraq War was a mistake,” says Cato’s Preble. “Two-thirds of the American people do believe the Iraq War was a mistake. So he has willingly chosen to align himself with that one-third of the population right out of the gate.”
more...
http://www.thenation.com/article/167683/mitt-romneys-neocon-war-cabinet
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