Rich Lowry, an intelligent man, still cannot bring himself to blame George Bush for the Iraq disaster. He comes close, trashing Rumsfeld (LRC also criticized the Rumsfeld cadre — when it mattered. For that we were called traitors). But in casting about for a scapegoat, Lowry wanly blames the “chiefs” – the Joint Chiefs – for the worst foreign policy mistake in American history.

Quite a feat. Alas, Lowry conveniently forgets – subconsciously? – a relevant major fact. Ahem, Rich — who was the Commander in Chief?

Here we perceive a psychotic neocon mandate — voluntary amnesia –that we must bear in mind in our conversations with the Earl Landgrebe Brigades. (Landgrebe, a diehard defender of Nixon on the Watergate panel, was my neighboring congressman from Indiana who uttered the famous line, “Don’t confuse me with the facts.”)

For years, Lew Rockwell and his various LRC contributors have had every known (and a few unknown) epithet hurled our way for telling the truth, while the Bush-cons and the neocons tried to hide it in every unseemly way available. Lowry’s crowd used to holler “support the military.” Now they trash it. It’s so like them.

What creeps.

Let’s face it, some our old friends who backed Bush will stubbornly refuse to admit their mistakes, or Bush’s. It’s a matter of their “down-is-up metaphysics.” They insist on living in a dream world, what Robert Musil called a “Second Reality.” Mired in failed ideology, poor Lowry proudly sinks to the level of smarm embraced by countless other failed neocons – they all blame somebody else.

The Best of Christopher Manion