Neocons’ stunning revisionism: Why they’re still divorced from reality explains Eric Alterman

Peter Bergen, CNN's national security reporter, writes a poignant column, entitled Bush's toxic legacy in Iraq, where he notes that under the guise of eliminating al Qaeda from Iraq George W. Bush introduced, and entrenched, al Qaeda into the region.  

From where did ISIS spring? One of George W. Bush's most toxic legacies is the introduction of al Qaeda into Iraq, which is the ISIS mother ship. ... If this wasn't so tragic it would be supremely ironic, because before the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003, top Bush officials were insisting that there was an al Qaeda-Iraq axis of evil. Their claims that Saddam Hussein's men were training members of al Qaeda how to make weapons of mass destruction seemed to be one of the most compelling rationales for the impending war.

After the war we captured 34 million pages of documents from Saddam Hussein's government which after extensive analysis, the Defense Intelligence Agency concluded  show no evidence of Bush's and Cheney's assertion of partnership with al Qaeda.

Instead of interrupting a budding relationship between Hussein and al Qaeda, the Iraq War precipitated the arrival of al Qaeda into Iraq. Although the Bush administration tended to gloss over the fact, al Qaeda only formally established itself in Iraq a year and a half after the U.S. invasion.

Zarqawi's strategy was to hit the Shia so they would in turn strike the Sunnis, so precipitating a vicious circle of violence in which al Qaeda would be cast as the protector of the Sunnis against the wrath of the Shia. It was a strategy that worked all too well, provoking first sectarian conflict in Iraq and later civil war.

Al Qaeda in Iraq, aka AQI, started attacks against "Shia religious processions, shrines and clerics," and as expected, the Shias struck back, escalating into an all out civil war.

Now the AQI control an area larger than New England - "(in) other words, the Bush administration had presided over the rise of precisely what it had said was one of the key goals of the Iraq War to destroy: a safe haven for al Qaeda in the heart of the Arab world.

As George W. Bush liked to congratulate leaders in his delusional fog, for botched jobs, "great job Georgey and Dickey."

Eric Alterman of BILLMOYERS.COM writes and outstanding indictment of Neocons’ stunning revisionism: Why they’re still divorced from reality

Alterman traces the alternative reality the neocons created for all of us back to Dick Cheney's manipulation of intelligence, and the media, to get us into the Iraq war. He reminds us of the roles played by Robert Novak and Judith Miller.

As we know, Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz and the other architects of the war did everything possible to intimidate and, when necessary, discredit those in the intelligence agencies who warned of the predictable consequences of war. Cheney and his deputies made repeated trips to Langley to challenge professional intelligence work and used pliant members of the media — including Robert Novak of the Washington Post and Judith Miller of the New York Times, among many, many others — to undermine the integrity of people like Joseph P. Wilson and Valerie Plame, lest the truth about the administration’s lies come out.''

By the way, in The seven people who need to STFU about Iraq right now, David Ferguson of Raw Story,tells us that disgraced New York Times reporter Judith Miller has become a regular expert quest on Fox News, advising viewers about what we should do in Iraq.