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Daniel McAdams

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Bill Kristol on Iran Deal: 'Its Munich!'

Saturday July 18, 2015

Bill Kristol is the epitome of the neocon mindset: cultivating a staid and urbane image while writing the most unhinged and mendacious claptrap. In his utterly predictable denunciation of the successful Iran nuclear talks, Kristol frames the issue in the crudest terms: if the deal goes through on the US end it will mean the return of $150 billion that was seized from the Iranians by the United States and that money will be used to commit terrorism against the United States. 

Writes Kristol: "How can we debate [the deal] without attending to the $150 billion that is going to a regime with American blood on its hands?"

Kristol cites the National Review which makes the fatuous claim (first made by the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs, which is headed by a close advisor to Israeli prime minister Netanyahu) that Iran has killed 1,000 Americans since 9/11. It turns out any weapon used in Iraq or Afghanistan against an invading US military that might have Iranian manufacturing origins means that the Iranians are responsible for that kill. 
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Lindsey Graham's Got a Simple Platform: War!

Monday June 1, 2015

Just when the US presidential contest needed a real macho man candidate, Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) today threw his camouflaged hat in the ring. The Senator is staking it all on the proposition that after 14 years of fighting a global war on terror that has produced nothing but more terror, what Americans really want most is eight more years of turbocharged world war under Comandante Graham.

"Radical Islam is running wild," said Graham today, but "I'm afraid some Americans have grown tired of fighting them." 

Graham is disgusted that the American people are going weak-kneed about war, and he won't give an inch. Forget that the US war on Iraq was the reason that "radical Islam is running wild."  Graham is holding firm to the idea that attacking Iraq was a very good thing.
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Sen. Cotton Challenges 'Coward' Iranian Foreign Minister

Thursday April 30, 2015

Fresh off his strange foray into international diplomacy neo-con style, where he sent a letter to Iranian leadership warning that a US deal with Iran would not be honored by the United States, Sen. Tom Cotton (R-AR) has again dipped his Arkansan toes into the international waters.

This time Cotton, who is in danger of becoming the Westboro Baptist Church of the neocon movement, has sent a flurry of Tweets to Iranian Foreign Minister Javad Zarif challenging him to come to Washington to debate the US Constitution. 

(Might round two include a debate of  Iranian history from ancient Persia to the present, with special emphasis on when last Iran invaded another country? Probably not.)
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Sen. Tom 'Cakewalk' Cotton: Let's Bomb Iran, It'll be a Breeze!

Thursday April 9, 2015

Sen. Tom Cotton is hoping people will forget all the pre-Iraq War II talk promising that it will be a "cakewalk" and that "we will in fact be greeted as liberators." He is hoping no one will remember when the Bush Administration sold the Iraq war based on the Rumsfeldian lie that total victory would take "five days or five weeks or five months, but it certainly isn't going to last any longer than that..."

No, he wants us to forget the Iraq war altogether and simply concentrate on the sublime beauty of steadily bombing Iraq from the air as was the strategy in the Clinton Administration -- a strategy that left untold thousands of innocent civilians dead in both sudden and slow, painful ways.

But this time he wants us to visualize the sublime beauty of attacking Iran in such a manner.
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Neocon Nervous Breakdown: Iran Framework Agreement Reached

Thursday April 2, 2015

Behind that Cheshire Cat grin one can detect, if listening closely, the sound of neocon godfather Bill Kristol gritting his teeth. The neocons pulled out all stops to scuttle any kind of Iran deal. They even called in a foreign leader in the person of kindred spirit Benjamin Netanyahu to repudiate President Obama's efforts to negotiate with Iran instead of bomb Iran. A foreign leader on their own soil to repudiate their own government! 

With today's announcement of a Framework Agreement in the P5+1 talks with Iran, neocons are approaching nervous breakdown mode.
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McCain to Israel: Go Rogue!

Tuesday March 31, 2015

With an Iran nuclear deal within striking distance in the P5+1 talks, John McCain is horrified to see the possibility for his longed-for US attack on Iran slowly slipping away. So he took to the Senate Floor last week to urge Israel to undermine his own country’s diplomatic efforts and “go rogue” on Iran. 

Said the Senator from Arizona:

The Israelis will need to chart their own path of resistance. On the Iranian nuclear deal, they may have to go rogue. Let's hope their warnings have not been mere bluffs.

His meaning was clear: the Senator hopes Israel’s decades of threats to wipe Iran of the face of the earth were not mere bluffs. He urges Israel to launch a pre-emptive war against an Iran that even the Mossad does not believe is pursuing nuclear weapons.
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Sen. Cotton's Fabric of War

Tuesday March 17, 2015

Freshman Senator Tom Cotton arrived in the Senate with a real bang. First he authored an unprecedented letter to the leaders of Iran trying to convince them (but really the American public) that the US government is an unreliable negotiating partner. Then his real ignorance about Iran became glaringly obvious, as he demanded that Iran give up a nuclear weapons program that does not exist (shades of Iraq, where the same was demanded of Saddam Hussein). 

How did such a relative unknown come to challenge a sitting Senator and win? The Project for a Kristolian Century had no small role. As Mondoweiss reported:

[Bill] Kristol’s Emergency Committee for Israel bankrolled the Cotton campaign with $1 million as he went down to the wire against Mark Pryor last fall.

Phillip Weiss also pointed out that mega-money donors like Sheldon Adelson, whose one issue is Israel, kicked in a goodly amount as well.

This weekend, as part of his case for "calling [Iran's] bluff," he cited Iran's "control of Tehran" as evidence of its appetite for regional dominance. OK, no one should be held to account for a slip of the tongue, and Cotton's Harvard education belies the mainstream Left's mischaracterization of him as some kind of countrified half-wit. But perhaps his smarts lead him to dissemble for effect?
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Sen. Cotton's Shocking Ignorance

Tuesday March 10, 2015

It is often incorrectly assumed that elected officials are better informed about current events than are average American citizens. "I don't have access to the kinds of information they have," is what is often heard.  In fact, this is not the case. Members of Congress are in many cases far less informed about current events than are interested Americans. When they do read the newspapers it is usually only the most establishment, superficial publications like the Washington Post or perhaps the Wall Street Journal. 

More often than not they rely on their staffers, who in turn rely on the most establishment, superficial publications or word of mouth from other staffers who rely on the most establishment, superficial publications. Most of Washington is an echo chamber, where groupthink prevails uber alles. 

In other words, far too much weight is given to the pronouncements of Senators and House Members. Most are shockingly ill-informed.

Take the rising star of neoconservatism, Sen. Tom Cotton (R-AR). By now many Americans are familiar with the letter he sent to his Iranian counterparts warning them that the current US president is an unreliable partner for negotiations: any deal reached would simply be overturned by a future president. The politics of this move are not within the portfolio of this Institute, but the Senator's rationale for sending the letter most certainly is.
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McCain Stands With ISIS?

Monday March 9, 2015

Sen. John McCain has a knack for getting his picture taken with the strangest characters. Though his support for US interventionism is steadfast, does he even know what he is getting himself into when he travels overseas? 

In the above photograph, we see Sen. McCain, along with his neocon sidekick Sen. Lindsey Graham, cavorting with his good friend Abdelhakim Belhadj. When McCain was cheerleading for the US attack on Libya, Belhadj was among those he promoted as offering the promise of a democratic Libyan future. But Belhadj was at the time a founder of the "Libya Dawn," which was a group of Islamic militia forces tied to al-Qaeda in Libya. Did Senator McCain overlook his Libyan friend's ties with al-Qaeda in his zeal to see Gaddafi overthrown or did he simply not know about it?
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McCain 'Troubled' by Iranian Help With ISIS

Tuesday March 3, 2015

Although the enemy of an enemy is not necessarily a friend, it should seemingly go without saying that if a foreign country has dedicated its resources to the defeat of an avowed enemy of one's own country it would be welcomed and even encouraged. 

For example, if the avowed enemy of the US government is ISIS, which has emerged as its chief declared antagonist following the US defeat of Saddam Hussein in Iraq, would it not be welcomed that a country close to the action has decided to dedicate its resources to the defeat of that organization? If foreign troops are to do the fighting and dying would that not be preferable to one's own countrymen doing the same if one is a patriot?
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