Moreover, according to the neocons, Vanity Fair did a bit of editorial hocus-pocus, thus making the neocons out to be nearly dovish, a downright horrifying prospect for these Machiavellian warmongers. Well, not exactly dovish, but close enough to irk them. Enough to have them pile on and accuse the magazine of "dirty tricks," according to Frank Gaffney.

"I had assumed that the interview would not be published until January, and find the timing of this release of excerpts tendentious, to say the least," gripes Eliot Cohen, the academic fount of the demented World War IV thesis who is connected at the hip with the criminal war racketeering outfits PNAC, the American Enterprise Institute, and Committee for the Liberation of Iraq—or maybe it should be called the Committee to Kill 650,000 Iraqis. "I believed in 2003 that the war was just and appropriate, and have been deeply distressed at its conduct," Cohen tells the National Review, the neocon clearinghouse.

"My most fundamental views on the war in Iraq remain as they were in 2003: The war was right, victory is essential, and defeat would be calamitous," writes David Frum, "axis of evil" speech writer and AEI "scholar." Of course, as usual, Frum does not tell us how to avoid a "calamitous" defeat, that is to say he evades any practical suggestion on how to stop an untold number of Iraqis from violently opposing the brutal occupation of their country.

Bush didn’t screw up, Frum insists, forever loyal to his old boss. Instead, it was the "National Security Council, whose counter-productive interactions produced bad results." In other words, Cheney, Rice, Rumsfeld, JCS Pace, Negroponte, and other hand-picked members of the NSC are at the root of the problem, that is to say conquering and subduing Iraq was not a cakewalk, as planned, thanks to these people.

Of course, Frum neglects to mention that Bush chairs the NSC. But then, as we know, Bush is a distracted and disinterested president, so I guess we can’t blame him for the mess. In short, the buck stops at Bush’s desk, but he does not see it, and if he did he probably wouldn’t know what to do with it.

According to Frum, David Rose, who wrote the Vanity Fair piece, "has earned a reputation as a truth teller," in other words he agrees with the neocons. Rose, Frum insists, is a "British journalist well known as a critic of the Saddam Hussein regime and supporter of the Iraq war." Frum insinuates something happened on the way from Rose’s word processor to the editors of Vanity Fair. "They have repackaged truths that a war-fighting country needs to hear into lies intended to achieve a shabby partisan purpose," the former speech writer complains. As for partisanship, it should be obvious to even the cursory follower of current events most Democrats support the neocon war in Iraq and will also support the coming one against Iran.

Frank Gaffney, former Richard Perle flunky (also charmingly known as "Perle’s bulldog"), a PNAC co-conspirator who likes to toss about the nonsensical phrase "Islamofascist" to describe Muslims who do not take kindly to invasions and "collateral damage," believes Rose’s article is a "bait-and-switch caper" and the magazine "deserves contempt for having made promises it had no intention of honoring, promises about facilitating a serious discussion of President Bush’s efforts to fight our Islamofascist foes in Iraq and elsewhere by some of the most adamant supporters of those efforts." In other words, things would have been different if a midterm election was not in the way, since the idea here is to fool all the people all the time, at least in the lead-up to an election. Obviously, neocons will only speak their mind when retribution is not in the cards. Or when there is no political consequence.

Poor Gaffney. Like all neocons, he insists on repeating recycled lies over and over in weary pathological fashion. "For the record, I remain convinced that the liberation of Iraq was a necessary and laudable measure to prevent a megalomaniac from handing off to terrorists weapons of mass destruction for the purpose of attacking us and our allies. Contrary to popular belief, the U.S. government has proof that Saddam Hussein had precisely such plans ready to implement. In fact, such evidence was actually documented in the Iraq Survey Group’s final report released last year with much obscuring fanfare about the absence of recovered WMDs."

Of course, none of this is true, and at this point only the bedrock 15% or so of Bush’s true-blue stepfordized followers believe this regularly discredited nonsense, but this does not stop Gaffney from making a fool out of himself, thus entertaining the conclusion he actually believes this Office of Special Plans drivel.

"I am also as committed as ever to the consolidation of the fully justified liberation of Iraq. I have repeatedly urged the president, both in person and through other channels, to make use of the full panoply of economic, financial, political, and military measures—a true War Footing—necessary to achieve it. Those who would have us do otherwise are deceiving us and/or themselves," Gaffney continues.

In other words, these guys are committed to the World War IV scenario and total, interminable "war" against Muslims, who are routinely conflated into cartoonish, medieval enemies, Islamofascists—never mind fascism better describes Gaffney and his ilk—who will, we are told by these Israel First dissemblers, be killing grade schoolers on Main Street soon enough if we don’t use the "full panoply" of our deadly inventory, including more depleted uranium, destined to pollute the entire biosphere of the planet and kill those not designated as Islamofascists by the neocon fascists.

Meanwhile, Michael Ledeen, AEI and JINSA troll, tells us he is not "remorseful" because he "had and have no involvement with our Iraq policy," a statement that is about as disingenuous as it gets, quite a feat considering the neocon track record for brazen disingenuousness. No direct involvement, that is to say he didn’t show up in the Oval Office or the Pentagon, although Ledeen appears to be involved in the Niger yellowcake forgery, bogus information Bush used as the cornerstone of his 2003 State of the Union address, even though French intelligence had repeatedly warned the Bush administration a year before his State of the Union address that the allegation could not be supported with evidence, not that evidence means squat to pathological liars.

"It appears Michael Ledeen, the 'influential’ neocon, was involved in Gladio operations past and is also linked to the faux Niger yellowcake documents cooked up by Italian intelligence," I wrote last October.

Now we have Laura Rozen, citing a scoop from the Italian newspaper La Repubblica, telling us Nicolo Pollari, chief of the fascist SISMI, "brought the Niger yellowcake story directly to the White House after his insistent overtures had been rejected by the Central Intelligence Agency in 2001 and 2002. Sismi had reported to the CIA on October 15, 2001, that Iraq had sought yellowcake in Niger, a report it also plied on British intelligence, creating an echo that the Niger forgeries themselves purported to amplify before they were exposed as a hoax." Pollari met with none other than Deputy National Security Adviser Stephen Hadley. "Their secret meeting came at a critical moment in the White House campaign to convince Congress and the American public that war in Iraq was necessary to prevent Saddam Hussein from developing nuclear weapons…. La Repubblica also quotes a Bush administration official saying, 'I can confirm that on September 9, 2002, General Nicolo Pollari met Stephen Hadley.’"

Let’s review: Ledeen is suspected of working on the forged Niger yellowcake documents and Nicolo Pollari, chief of the fascist SISMI, passed these off to the highest levels of the Bush administration, and these documents played a big part in the invasion of Iraq and the mass murder of more than a 100,000 Iraqis.

Since I wrote this, the number of slaughtered Iraqis has been horrifically adjusted upward, to over 650,000.

But Ledeen, of course, cares not about Iraq, except as a way to get at Iran, his primary focus, or maybe it should be characterized as fanatical obsession. "Readers of NRO know well how disappointed I have been with our failure to address Iran, which was, and remains, the central issue, and it has been particularly maddening to live through extended periods when our children were in battle zones where Iranian-supported terrorists were using Iranian-made weapons against Americans, Iraqis and Afghans. I have been expressing my discontent for more than three years."

Never mind that "senior British military leaders" have "found nothing to support the Americans’ contention that Iran is providing weapons and training in Iraq," according to the Washington Post. Moreover, earlier this year, JCS chairman Gen. Peter Pace, said "the United States does not have proof that Iran’s government is responsible for Iranians smuggling weapons and military personnel into Iraq." Of course, this does not matter to the amoral dissembler Michael Ledeen, who is a student and admirer of Niccolò Machiavelli, who preached deception in the name of the state.

Finally, we have the Prince of Darkness himself, Richard Perle. "I believe it would be a catastrophic mistake to leave Iraq, as some are demanding, before the Iraqis are able to defend their elected government. As I told Mr. Rose, the terrorist threat to our country, which is real, would be made much worse if we were to make an ignominious withdrawal from Iraq." Perle also said the "levels of brutality" in Iraq "are truly horrifying, and I have to say, I underestimated the depravity," although he is apparently willing to allow this depravity to continue in order to allow Iraqis to defend their installed puppet government and avoid "an ignominious withdrawal," never mind if another 650,000 Iraqis are slaughtered in the process.

"I told Mr. Rose that as a nation we had waited too long before dealing with Osama bin Laden. We could have destroyed his operation in Afghanistan before 9/11."

In other words, Perle is either an idiot or he considers the American people idiotic. Considering the Straussian philosophy, no doubt the latter is the case.

In fact, we, that is the United States government, had plenty to do with Osama bin Laden prior to the events of nine eleven. "Osama bin Laden’s al-Qaeda terrorist network has been active in the Balkans for years, most recently helping Kosovo rebels battle for independence from Serbia with the financial and military backing of the United States and NATO," writes Isabel Vincent of the National Post, a fact apparently confirmed by an FBI document. In fact, NATO’s operation with "al-Qaeda," in support of the drug-running KLA, occurred after Bin Laden supposedly masterminded the embassy bombings in the East African capital cities of Dar es Salaam, Tanzania and Nairobi, Kenya.

"With the complicity of NATO and the US State Department… Mujahideen mercenaries from the Middle East and Central Asia were recruited to fight in the ranks of the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) in 1998-99, largely supporting NATO’s war effort," writes Michel Chossudovsky. "Confirmed by British military sources, the task of arming and training of the KLA had been entrusted in 1998 to the US Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) and Britain’s Secret Intelligence Services MI6, together with 'former and serving members of 22 SAS [Britain’s 22nd Special Air Services Regiment], as well as three British and American private security companies,’" the Scotsman reported on August 29, 1999.

Prior to this, the Clinton administration, according to a "lengthy Congressional report by the Republican Party Committee (RPC) published in 1997… 'helped turn Bosnia into a militant Islamic base’ leading to the recruitment through the so-called 'Militant Islamic Network,’ of thousands of Mujahideen from the Muslim worldent through the so-called "Militant Islamic Network," of thousands of Mujahideen from the Muslim world," according to Chossudovsky’s research.

For the neocons, however, the fulcrum of evil in the lead-up to the invasion of Iraq was not Osama bin Laden, but rather Saddam Hussein. "I believed we should not repeat that mistake with Saddam Hussein, that we could not responsibly ignore the threat that he might make weapons of mass destruction available to terrorists who would use them to kill Americans," avers Perle. "I favored removing his regime. And despite the current difficulties, I believed, and told Mr. Rose, that 'if we had left Saddam in place, and he had shared nerve gas with al Qaeda, or some other terrorist organization, how would we compare what we’re experiencing now with that?’"

For the ill-informed, this may seem reasonable, never mind this facile argument is easily disassembled. As former United Nations Special Commission on Iraq inspector Scott Ritter has demonstrated, between "1991 and 1998, UNSCOM achieved considerable results in disarming Iraq by dismantling the bulk of Iraq’s chemical, biological, and nuclear weapons capabilities, as well as its ballistic missiles. None of Iraq’s major biological weapons production facilities are in operation [as of early 1999], with some of them having been destroyed completely."

Even the CIA disputed the ludicrous claim "that al Qaeda sent operatives to Iraq to acquire chemical and biological weapons—assertions that were repeated later by then-Secretary of State Colin Powell to the United Nations in making the case for the invasion of Iraq," CNN reported in late 2005. "The CIA report appears to support a recently declassified document that revealed the Defense Intelligence Agency thought in February 2002 that the source, Ibn al-Shaykh al-Libi, was lying to interrogators."

None of this matters, however, as a large number of people still believe Saddam and Osama were in cahoots, and this is why Perle can get away with making such an outrageous and unsubstantiated claim, even at this late date.

Moreover, the corporate media, now set-up to report that Vanity Fair had tricked the neocons into out of context confessions in the eleventh hour before the midterm election, will not mention any of the above facts and will likely instead portray the editors of Vanity Fair as scalawags, attempting to make publication mileage out of the confessions of the neocons, who are, as they tell us on the NRO site, simply and gallantly striving to save America from venomous Islamofascists.