Fox News'Shep Smith Gives Iraq Hawks A History Lesson, reminding Republicans who are demanding that President Obama reengage in the religious civil war in Iraq, that it was their own disastrous advice that got us into this boondoggle to begin with.
"Are we about to be drawn back into a conflict in Iraq?" Smith asked. "The same people who 12 years ago told us this will be quick, this will be easy, this will be inexpensive, they will see us as liberators, it's the right thing to do, are now telling us, 'It's the right thing to do.' What's the endgame? Who's thought this through?"Smith argued the Iraq war provided a valuable history lesson: the George W. Bush administration led the U.S. into a war that exacted a heavy toll on all sides of the conflict for many years.
Talking Points Memo notes that Smith later told Fox News' Chris Wallace that he hasn't forgotten "being bamboozled" by the Bush administration's justification for invading Iraq.
"Well, I remember it. I think it would be wrong for us to just sit around and listen and not ask big questions," Smith said.
Senator John McCain (R-AZ) has demanded the resignations of President Obama's entire national security team.
Shep Smith has defied Fox New's conservative party line on Bowe Berghdahl, and previously by endorsing President Obama's position on same-sex marriage.
Smith shows a capacity for learning asking why should we now trust the very same people who were dead wrong in leading, and misleading, us into a poorly thought out war in Iraq in 2003.
Fool me once, shame on you, fool me right shame on me.
Many of these neocons should be ashamed to even show their faces in public let along have the sheer brazen gall to on TV and lecture President Obama on anything to do with Iraq, strategy, foreign policy, or war. We should have branded their foreheads with a large scarlet "IL" in an indelible tattoo for "idiot liar."
If readers could help me start a "Neocon Hall of Shame" list, I will make sure we create a public service bulletin where we track down their most shameful and stupid quotes and make sure the American people know these people and institutions have severely damaged and marginal credibility, at best. And to the best of my knowledge none of them have apologized, or repudiated their half-baked ideological zealotry.
People like Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, Bill Kristol, Paul Wolfowitz, John Bolton, John Podhoretz, Condoleezza Rice, Elliott Abrams, Richard Perle, and Paul Bremer, Frank Gaffney and their minions are still pushing their same garbage despite the tremendous evidence refuting every aspect of their theories and plans espoused in the PNAC.
Any media organizations that even see fit to invite these people to offer their opinions on any topic should, at least, remind viewers of how dreadfully wrong they were in getting us into the $1 trillion plus and counting war in Iraq, and start their interviews asking them if they would like to apologize.
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Footnote: Neocon Watchlist
Here's a starting list provided from Wikipedia Notable people associated with neoconservatism - Wikepedia
The list includes public people identified as personally neoconservative at an important time or a high official with numerous neoconservative advisers, such as George W. Bush and Richard Cheney. Some are dead, or are ex-neoconservatives.
Politicians
George W. Bush
Rudy Giuliani (R) - Mayor of New York City (1996-2002), 2008 presidential candidate[citation needed]
Tom Cotton (R) - US Representative from Arkansas's 4th congressional district (2013-)
Newt Gingrich (R) (former neoconservative) - US Representative from Georgia's 6th congressional district (1979-1999) and Speaker of the House of Representatives (1995-1999), 2012 presidential candidate[102]
Government officials
Paul Wolfowitz (R) – State and Defense Department official
R. James Woolsey, Jr. - Director of Central Intelligence, Under Secretary of the Navy, green energy lobbyist.
Richard Perle – Assistant Secretary of Defense, lobbyist.
Jeane Kirkpatrick (R) – Ambassador to the United Nations.
Scooter Libby – Chief-of-Staff to Cheney.[citation needed]
John R. Bolton - Ambassador to the United Nations (2005-2006), recess appointee.
Elliot Abrams (R) – foreign policy adviser.
William G. Boykin – under Secretary of Defense for Intelligence.[citation needed]
Eliot A. Cohen – US State Department Counselor 2007-2009, now Robert E. Osgood Professor of Strategic Studies at the Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies at the Johns Hopkins University.
Victoria Nuland – Assistant Secretary of State.[103]
Academics
Francis Fukuyama
Robert Kagan – Senior Fellow at the Brookings Institution, Historian, founder of the Yale Political Monthly, adviser to Republican political campaigns. Kagan is the husband of Victoria Nuland.
Francis Fukuyama (former neoconservative) – Senior Fellow at the Center on Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law at Stanford, former-neoconservative, political scientist, political economist, and author.
Victor Davis Hanson – Martin and Illie Anderson Senior Fellow at Stanford University's Hoover Institution, columnist and author.
Michael Ledeen – Freedom Scholar chair at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, former US government consultant, author, columnist.
Nathan Glazer – Professor of sociology, columnist, author.
Harvey Mansfield – William R. Kenan, Jr. Professor of Government at Harvard University, author.
Public intellectuals
Irving Kristol (Deceased) – Publisher, journalist, columnist.
William Kristol – Founder and editor of The Weekly Standard, professor of political philosophy and American politics, political adviser.
Norman Podhoretz – Editor-in-Chief of Commentary.
John Podhoretz – Editor-at-Large of Commentary, presidential speech writer, author.
Irwin Stelzer – International economics and business columnist, editor at The Weekly Standard, Oxford fellow.
Charles Krauthammer – Pulitzer Prize winner, columnist, physician.
David Frum – Journalist, Republican speech writer, columnist.
Oriana Fallaci (Deceased) – Italian – U.S.permanent resident journalist and writer.
Jennifer Rubin - Columnist and blogger for The Washington Post
Michael Rubin - Resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute
Jonathan S. Tobin - Senior online editor of Commentary
Daniel Pipes (former neoconservative) - Historian, writer, and political commentator.
Fred Barnes - Executive editor of the news publication The Weekly Standard
Related publications and institutions
Institutions
Foundation for Defense of Democracies
Henry Jackson Society
Hudson Institute
Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs
Project for the New American Century
American Enterprise Institute
Publications
Commentary
Front Page Magazine
The Public Interest
The Weekly Standard
The Washington Free Beacon