“Rather than explicitly discuss the neoconservative cabal that has assumed control of important parts of U.S. policy since September 11, [corporate journos] couple references to ‘the civilians at the Pentagon’ with ‘officials in the vice president’s office’ when referring to administration hard-liners. But rarely do the mainstream media provide much detail to explain who those people are, what they’ve done, and how they operate.” Dreyfuss characterizes the Straussian neocons—their names often mentioned here—as “Cheneyites,” indicating they are “acolytes” of the president, er vice president, when in fact the Straussian neocons are pulling Cheney’s strings, not the other way around.

Dreyfuss mentions Cheney’s dismal approval rating (it stands at 18 percent) and suggests “there is a quiet murmur among GOP insiders about dumping him. The Moonie-linked Insight magazine, wired into right-wing Republicans, last month reported that moves are afoot to ‘retire’ Cheney in 2007,” a mere year before Bush (we can only hope) leaves office. But even if Cheney is “retired” to wherever he would retire (a ranch in Wyoming maybe—or a bunker, since vampires avoid sunlight) it will make no difference unless the Straussian neocons—most notably Cheney’s “top adviser on national security,” the WINEP Zionist John Hannah, who replaced Scooter—go with him.

Cheney’s staff is ticked off as a literal who’s-who of Straussian neocons and criminal Zionist riff-raff:

Several of Cheney’s top aides, as well as the vice president himself, were early supporters of the neoconservative flagship Project for a New American Century, whose founding statement called for a return to a “Reaganite policy of military strength and moral clarity.” Among them were [Scooter] Libby, [Aaron] Friedberg, and Robert Kagan, who is married to Victoria Nuland, the U.S. ambassador to NATO who served as national security adviser in the OVP. She, in turn, succeeded Eric Edelman, another neoconservative who left the vice president’s office to serve as ambassador to Turkey before taking over Douglas Feith’s job as chief of policy for the Department of Defense….

Today [David] Wurmser, Hannah, Liz Cheney, and her father are pushing hard for confrontations with both Iran and Syria. Liz Cheney, who exercises enormous power inside the State Department, has secured millions of dollars to support opposition elements in both countries, and she has met with Syria’s version of Ahmad Chalabi, a discredited businessman from Virginia named Farid al-Ghadry. Hannah sat in on the meeting with Ghadry, which was arranged through Meyrav Wurmser, a friend of the would-be Syrian leader. Hannah and Wurmser’s boss, the vice president, talks freely about the need for a military showdown with Iran to destroy its alleged nuclear program. The true measure of how powerful the vice president’s office remains today is whether the United States chooses to confront Iran and Syria or to seek diplomatic solutions. For the moment, at least, the war party led by Dick Cheney remains in ascendancy.

Note the word “ascendancy,” as in these guys are not going anywhere.

Gary Leupp comments on Dreyfuss’ article: the Straussian neocons, billed as Cheney’s “acolytes,” are “equipped with a philosophical outlook that justifies the use of hyped, imagined threats to unite the masses behind rulers’ objectives and ambitions, to suppress dissent and control through fear. They’re inclined to identify each new target as ‘a new Hitler,’ and to justify their actions as ‘an answer to the Holocaust.’”

This last bit is instrumental. In an earlier article, Leupp quotes the arch-Zionist Douglas Feith (his father was a Jabotinsky Betar radical, that is to say a fascist), who told Jeffrey Goldberg of the New Yorker:

I had done a lot of reading, relative for a kid, about World War Two, and I thought about Chamberlain a lot. Chamberlain wasn’t popular in my house. What I was hearing from the antiwar movement, with which I had a fair amount of sympathy . . . were thoughts about how the world works, how war is not the answer. I mean, the idea that we could have peace no matter what anybody else in the world does didn’t make sense to me. It’s a solipsism. When I took all these nice-sounding ideas and compared it [sic] to my own little personal ‘Cogito, ergo sum,’ which was my understanding that my family got wiped out by Hitler, and that all this stuff about working things out—well, talking to Hitler to resolve the problem didn’t make any sense to me. The kind of people who put bumper stickers on their car that declare that ‘war is not the answer,’ are they making a serious comment? What’s the answer to Pearl Harbor? What’s the answer to the Holocaust? The surprising thing is not that there are so many Jews who are neocons but that there are so many who are not.

“In Feith’s fevered, confused mind, war on Iraq—a Third World country that never attacked the U.S.—is the moral equivalent to the U.S.’s response to Pearl Harbor, to resistance to Nazism,” Leupp comments. “It’s an ‘answer to the Holocaust,’ in which for all I know he may genuinely feel that Iraqis were somehow deeply implicated.”

It’s not that the Iraqis are complicit in the Holocaust—it is rather they are Arabs and Muslims and lived in a relatively powerful and wealthy nation (before Bush Senior’s shock and awe campaign). Iraq was a threat to Israel and thus the Straussian neocons. It’s no secret the Israelis have long planned to balkanize the Middle East and it is also no secret the opportunistic neolibs are along for the ride.

Cheney and the neocons are on for the duration. Between now and 2008, Bush the “decider,” under the sway of the Straussian neocons, will shock and awe Iran and attempt to fix an ineffectual puppet government and stir up as much trouble as possible in order to break the country up into malleable fiefdoms based on ethnicity (Kurds, Baluchis, Lurs, and Turkmans).

As well, they will attempt to slip a shock and awe of Syria in there.

Of course, come 2008, Bush may declare himself the “war president” and refuse to accept elections, or a new ruler hand-picked by the global elite.

If that happens, expect tanks to roll up the steps of the White House.