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swag

(26,487 posts)
Thu Jul 26, 2012, 12:01 PM Jul 2012

Romney's foreign policy advisors: architects of the fiasco that made Iraq the close ally of Iran

http://www.thedemocraticstrategist.org/strategist/2012/07/the_invasion_of_iraq_overthrew.php

A recent profile of Colin Powell described his growing concern about Romney's disturbingly narrow range of foreign policy advisors. As the article noted:

Romney's team of about 40 foreign policy advisers includes many who hail from the neoconservative wing of the party...Many were enthusiastic supporters of the Iraq War, and many are proponents of a U.S. or Israeli attack on Iran.

This group includes a number of well-known Neo-con figures like John Bolton, Elliot Cohen and Robert Kagan but it also includes a variety of lesser-known individuals who were intimately connected with the botched planning and execution of the war in Iraq. As a Nation review of Romney's advisors noted:

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 the Cato Institute's Christopher Preble.

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Romney's foreign policy advisors: architects of the fiasco that made Iraq the close ally of Iran (Original Post) swag Jul 2012 OP
that's quite a condemnation coming from a place like the Cato Institute ! (nt) MIDNITERIDER1438 Jul 2012 #1
Relevance to my last blog post for this scary group MIDNITERIDER1438 Jul 2012 #2

MIDNITERIDER1438

(113 posts)
2. Relevance to my last blog post for this scary group
Thu Jul 26, 2012, 12:26 PM
Jul 2012

With regards to: Jihadist Aims In A Failed Islamic Nation-State's Civil War Armed With Chemical Weapons ?

What concerns me is to what ends the jihadists will use to justify their involvement, besides the probability that what may eventually replace the Assad regime will not be a democratic government. What the Romney campaign of neocon bumblers gives script to their candidate warning of the dream of the jihadists to establish a "caliphate" somewhere is not in Iran but is more possible in a united Sunni nation-state adjacent to their Al Qaeda power base in Iraq. However, of even greater concern will be the massive quantities of WMD that exist in Syria as nowhere else in the Middle East.

The only parallels that the Romney group may be mistakenly but indirectly correct about is not the "Soviet threat" but the possibility of jihadist warfare by proxy in Syria. The jihadists are attempting to repeatedly paint the situation of the Assad regime's Alawite Shia minority as "occupiers" which is the rallying call for jihadist infiltration acceleration and engagement alongside the Free Syrian Army (FSA), but the FSA has not fallen for this concept as of yet, whilst welcoming the participation of jihadists but downplaying the idea of foreign fighters entering the fray en masse themselves.
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