Kristol, Abrams, Perle, et al-shameless neocons who never concede error, now eager to refight Iraq War over Hagel nom. nyti.ms/V9RYCt

— Philip Turner (@philipsturner) January 14, 2013

 

The debate over President Obama’s nomination of Chuck Hagel as Secretary of Defense is prompting unpleasant reminders of the worst of the Reagan and Bush years, with discredited right-wingers attacking Hagel over matters they were catastrophically wrong about only a decade ago. Steve Benen, of the MaddowBlog, read the same James Rutenberg article in the NY Times that I had tweeted about above. He ends his post with this observation:

“Or put another way, the decorated combat veteran [Hagel] who’s reluctant to launch new invasions is being lectured on war-avoidance by the same ‘chicken hawks’ who left their credibility in Iraq–and most of the GOP doesn’t find this odd.
I’m reminded of an on-air conversation Rachel [Maddow] had with Chris Hayes last April about the neocons’ failures: ‘No one [on the right] has ever had to face up to what happened, this sort of magnitude of the error is just completely erased by history. It’s like those old Stalinist books where they just get rid of the people that were disappeared.’
At the time, Chris was talking about folks like Dan Senor taking a leading role in the Romney campaign, despite his role in ‘the worst period of American foreign policy in 100 years, quite plausibly.’ But the problem obviously continues.”

It’s easy to see why hopeless characters like Richard Perle, Elliott Abrams, and Bill Kristol are showing such an aversion to Chuck Hagel. He didn’t hesitate to call them out for their  specious arguments justifying the invasion of Iraq, and they can’t get over it. Oh, well, the bigger the pig poked the louder it squeals.