Four years ago, I didn’t even know what a NeoConservative was—and now they’re running our country. George W. Bush may be President, but the NeoCons are calling all the shots.

• “[NeoCons] want Bush to expand the war, broaden the theater of operations, multiply our enemies, and ignore our allies. If Bush should adopt this strategy, it would be America and Israel against the Arab and Islamic world with Europe neutral and almost all of Asia rooting for our humiliation.”-- Patrick J. Buchanan, The American Conservative, 3/1/04

• “Iraq is just one battle in a larger war, bringing down the regime in Iran is the central act, because Iran is the world's most dangerous terrorist country.”-- Michael Ledeen of the American Enterprise Institute—the de facto headquarters for neconservative policy, quoted in NeoCon 101, csmonitor.com

• “In 1989, following the end of the Cold War and just prior to the Gulf War, Dick Cheney, Colin Powell, and Paul Wolfowitz produced the 'Defense Planning Guidance' report advocating U.S. military dominance around the globe. …the plan called for the U.S. to be dominant over friends and foes alike.”-- The Sunday Herald, 9/15/02

• “[Rumsfeld] says he has told the Pentagon to ‘think the unthinkable’. [Cheney] has said the US is considering military or other action against ‘40 to 50 countries’ and warns that the new war may last 50 years or more… […and Bush adviser, Richard Perle says] ‘If we just let our vision of the world go forth, and we embrace it entirely, and we don't try to piece together clever diplomacy but just wage a total war, our children will sing great songs about us years from now.’"--John Pilger, Daily Mirror, 1/29/02

I’ve noticed two important things about the NeoConservatives. First—they have been wrong on just about everything they have ever said about Iraq, and second—they are not Conservatives. They infiltrated our government in the guise of Conservatives, and they continue to enjoy the support of Conservatives; but they are not conservatives.

• “Our ‘neoconservatives’ are neither new nor conservative, but old as Bablyon and evil as Hell.”-- Edward Abbey (1927-1989), Author and Environmentalist

• “The oil revenues of Iraq could bring between $50 and $100 billion over the course of the next two or three years…We’re dealing with a country that can really finance its own reconstruction, and relatively soon.”-- Assistant Secretary of Defense and the mastermind responsible for Operation Iraqi Freedom—Paul Wolfowitz, in Congressional Testimony, 3/27/03

• “[The war] could last six days, six weeks. I doubt six months.”-- Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, Feb 2003

• “We will, in fact, be greeted as liberators.…I think it will go relatively quickly… weeks rather than months.”-- Vice President Cheney, 3/16/03

• [Six months later] “I think has been fairly significant success in terms of putting Iraq back together again…and certainly wouldn't lead me to suggest or think that the strategy is flawed or needs to be changed.”--Vice President Cheney, MSNBC, 9/14/03

• “Neo-con interventionist foreign policies are only breeding resentment, creating even more enemies, and putting our children and grandchildren into a financial black hole so deep they may never get out…. There is nothing conservative about the U.S policy in Iraq.”-- Rep. John J. Duncan (R-TN), 9/24/03

• “Does [Conservative] describe an administration that has undermined some of our most basic freedoms, gutted laws designed to conserve our natural resources, and led the nation into a war based on fear rather than fact? …If you think you are a conservative, look at the track record for this administration and ask yourself if it fits the conservative profile of smaller government, a balanced budget and limited foreign entanglements.”-- Joan King, The Gainseville Times, 12/9/03

• “…If the neoconservatives retain control of the conservative, limited-government movement in Washington, the ideas, once championed by conservatives, of limiting the size and scope of government will be a long-forgotten dream.”-- Rep. Ron Paul (R-TX), 7/10/03

Conservatives need to ask themselves which they would prefer—enduring four years of a liberal President who wants their children to have a good education and healthcare; or to stay the course and pour all of America’s blood and treasure into the NeoCon’s perpetual war machine.

I’m sorry Conservatives, but you were fooled and America has suffered for it. Instead of a conservative President, you got a War President—controlled by war profiteers. So remember:

• “Fool me once... Shame on.. Shame on you....Fool me...Can't get fooled again.” (You know what he meant.)-- President George W. Bush, MSNBC-TV, 9/17/02

Conservatives, don’t get fooled again.

Mick Youther is retiring from Southern Illinois University to devote the next few months to Regime Change in America. You can email your comments to Mick@interventionmag.com

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