Remember how Bush One’s National Security Adviser Brent Scowcroft used a Wall Street Journal op-ed in the run-up to the Iraq war to warn Bush Two about the perils of an invasion? At the time, many believed Scowcroft, a close collaborator of the 41st President, was acting as a proxy for his former boss.
More recently, in the first presidential debate, Scowcroft’s words were thrown back at Dubya when John Kerry invoked Bush One’s prescient warning (from A World Transformed, the 1998 book he wrote with Scowcroft) that “had we gone the invasion route, the United States could conceivably still be an occupying power in a bitterly hostile land.”
Now, Scowcroft is back–a little more than two weeks before a highly contested election–with more tough criticism of the Bush Administration. In an interview in the October 14 Financial Times, Scowcroft bluntly criticized the President’s handling of the Arab-Israeli conflict. “Sharon just has him wrapped around his little finger,” Scowcroft told the Financial Times. “I think the president is mesmerized.” He added: “When there is a suicide attack [followed by a reprisal] Sharon calls the president and says, ‘I’m on the front line of terrorism,’ and the president says, ‘Yes, you are…’ He [Sharon] has been nothing but trouble.”
Scowcroft also denounced Iraq as a “failing venture,” and lambasted the “extremes of the neocons” for their unilateralist approach which has harmed relations between Europe and the US.
If you need any more evidence that George W. and his neoconners are reckless extremists who need to be booted from office on November 2, check out Scowcroft’s remarks.
