(LAT) Robert Scheer: "The Peter Principle and the Neocon Coup"

[TahitiNut]

November 16, 2004

Robert Scheer:
The Peter Principle and the Neocon Coup
The bloodletting has begun.

I'm not referring to the latest attempt to reconquer Iraq, but rather the wholesale political revenge campaign being waged by the hard-liners in the Bush administration against anybody and everybody inside the government who challenged the way the second Persian Gulf war in a decade was marketed and run.

Out: Secretary of State Colin Powell, whose political epitaph should now read, "You break it, you own it" for his prescient but unwanted warning to the president on the danger of imperial overreach in Iraq.

Out: Top CIA officials who dared challenge, behind the scenes, the White House's unprecedented exploitation of raw intelligence data in order to sell a war to a Congress and a public hungry for revenge after 9/11.

<snip>

Now, by successfully discarding those who won't buy into the administration's ideological fantasies of remaking the world in our image, the neoconservatives have consolidated control of the United States' vast military power.

With the ravaging of the CIA and the ousting of Powell — instead of the more-deserving Rumsfeld — the coup of the neoconservatives is complete. They have achieved a remarkable political victory by failing upward.

---

The Busholini Fascists know no boundaries regarding their insatiable appetites for wealth and power.

[asjr]

1. And we all knew it was coming. We have all ranted, raved,

preached and pleaded to be heard. The message we tried to send was unheard because too many people in this country were duped into believing that such a "godly" man in the WH would not do anything wrong. This is a turning point. I have to believe that there are men and women in this country who will work for the citizens of this country instead of a right-wing cabal. They are out there somewhere. Comrades in words, we must keep up the fight because to give it up means disaster. DUers are among the most loyal, caring individuals I have ever had the fortune to meet.

[Maeve]

2. I was just thinking of the Peter Principle in re: Condi!

Between her and her boss...who has most surpassed their level of incompetence?

[TahitiNut]

3. Yup. Yesterday, I called it the "GOPeter Principle".

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=102&topic_id=992662&mesg_id=992754

[ladjf]

4. The worst thing about it is that the rest of us will suffer from their

failures more than they will. They will all leave office with more than enough money to last a lifetime. The rest of us are out here trying to cope with a no-win situation.

[TahitiNut]

6. I tend to view the murders of 100,000 Iraqis as the "worst thing."

So far. :shrug: Add to that the many thousands of casualties, the millions of Americans added to the poverty rolls, the millions who've gone jobless, the many thousands of additional homeless people, the millions who've lost health care ... still, it seems those who've been murdered by this outlaw regime are the "worst thing" by far.

[ladjf]

9. I agree with you when limited to "so far". But, when viewed on

the long scope, millions will die or suffer from the lack of basic
survival needs. The U.S. will be reduced to a 3rd world status.
Any number of possibilities are present that would be able to surpass
the U.S. militarily and since that could, they probably would.
In other words, 30 years from now might find us in the same situation
Iraq is in today. Headlines will say, "heavy fighting today in Cleveland. Thousands of insurgents are kill as the coalition troops
blaze their way to the center of the city, which is now 70% destroyed. Reconstruction plans are being discussed by members of the coalition. Other violence is breaking out in Memphis and Miami."


We will not be able to maintain our superiority in space tech as we will have off-shored so many high tech jobs that we no longer are able to research and/or maintain or space presence. Other more wealthy countries have out bid us for the brain power and with manufacturers
of space hardware.

Coastal cities around the world have been abandoned as a result of high tide flooding. Refugee are fleeing inland only to be met with resistance by inland inhabitants who claim that there isn't enough food and shelter for the refugees. They are being turned back at the outskirts of the cities. Many are trying to "live off the land" in what little forest remain is areas that were formally Federal parks.
Many are dying of malnutrition and exposure.

[Malva Zebrina]

5. and much much more

probably too much for Scheer to fit in his column.

And the opposition party believes we must go further to the right.

Pessimism on my part today invites me to believe that the only way out of it is a complete breakdown and collapse with the accompanying suffering of the American people and it probably will not happen in my lifetime. We are full swing into fascism and apparently going strong.

No wonder the appointment of Condi the Convoluted to Sec'y of State. It is a classic example of the Peter Principle. It is well known she is an incompetant "unsticker". All she needs to do is carry on the threat and revenge syndrome employed by Bush and the gang which no doubt extends to Europe, South America, Africa etc. as well as our disloyal dissidents here at home. I suppose she is capable of that. She seems to know it well.

[RyomaSakamoto]

7. Rise to the top - Surface at the bottom

:scared:

[JHB]

8. I've put it as...

"The lowest form of scum sinking to the top"

[struggle4progress]

10. Georgie seems to be far beyond the level of his own incompetence. eom

[Martin Eden]

11. If you don't march in lockstep with the Bushistas ...

... you are marched right out of government service. Loyalty to the president trumps professionalism, ideology trumps fact, and the Pentagon, CIA, and State Department are more than ever controlled by a tight circle of power.

We are witnessing a historic shift away from at least a modicum of open government to something that looks a lot more like facism than democracy.

They control much of the media, and blind the people by claiming the mantle of God and country.

Are we in 1930's Germany or 21st century America?

[TahitiNut]

12. Seventy-five years from now, people will no longer use "Nazi" ...

... as the epithet. It'll be "Repig" or "NeoKon" or "Yankee" or "AmeriKlan" ... or some word that'll be a fighting insult, not used by civilized people. We'll be the country who invaded, based on bald-faced LIES, another nation having a different religion, and killed hundreds of thousands of their people, occupied them, and stole their natural resources. Then we did it again. And again.

Sometimes I think the reason the Repigs are so eager to destroy the United Nations is because it might be where we get stopped eventually.