Why The Usual Suspects are lashing out at Rice

The Usual Suspects have published a story in the latest issue of Insight in which they rip into Condi Rice as being incompetent and having reversed the administrations national security and foreign policy agenda. This coming from her handling of the Israeli/Lebanon crisis.

Newt Gingrich and Richard Perle were the most vocal of The Usual Suspects. Newt taking the opportunity to beat his World War III drum , even though it's technically World War IV now.

"North Korea firing missiles," Mr. Gingrich said. "You say there will be consequences. There are none. We are in the early stages of World War III. Our bureaucracies are not responding fast enough. We don't have the right attitude."

What was Condi's major faux pas?

"Rice attempted to increase pressure on Israel to stand down and to demonstrate restraint," said Stephen Clemons, director of the American Strategy Program at the New America Foundation. "The rumor is that she was told flatly by the prime minister's office to back off."

And as I've already pointed out in It's World War IV Stupid! How the Usual Suspects planned this all along. , attempting to reign in Israel's attack on Lebanon is definately the exact opposite of the neocons foreign policy agenda.

Is it any wonder, then, that people like Perle, Gingrich, Hannah, Bolton and Abrams are united in castigating Miss Rice? Afterall, Israels attempts to destroy Hezbollah are but the opening phases of the reimaging of the Middle East as laid out a decade ago by David Wurmser. This is called the Clean Break policy and the first step it called for has already been accomplished:

1: replace Saddam with an Iraqi National Congress. (check)

The next step is just getting underway:

2: Israeli sponsorship of attacks on Syria by "Israeli proxy forces" in Lebanon and/or striking Syria proper.

Knocking out Hezbollah is merely the prelude to Israel positioning itself so that it can carry out the second phase of the plan detailed by Wurmser nearly a decade ago. It's spelled out plainly in Clean Break:

An effective approach, and one with which American can sympathize, would be if Israel seized the strategic initiative along its northern borders by engaging Hizballah,

That is why Israel planned the invasion over a year ago.

"Of all of Israel's wars since 1948, this was the one for which Israel was most prepared," said Gerald Steinberg, professor of political science at Bar-Ilan University. "In a sense, the preparation began in May 2000, immediately after the Israeli withdrawal, when it became clear the international community was not going to prevent Hezbollah from stockpiling missiles and attacking Israel. By 2004, the military campaign scheduled to last about three weeks that we're seeing now had already been blocked out and, in the last year or two, it's been simulated and rehearsed across the board."

More than a year ago, a senior Israeli army officer began giving PowerPoint presentations, on an off-the-record basis, to U.S. and other diplomats, journalists and think tanks, setting out the plan for the current operation in revealing detail. Under the ground rules of the briefings, the officer could not be identified.

In his talks, the officer described a three-week campaign: The first week concentrated on destroying Hezbollah's heavier long-range missiles, bombing its command-and-control centers, and disrupting transportation and communication arteries. In the second week, the focus shifted to attacks on individual sites of rocket launchers or weapons stores. In the third week, ground forces in large numbers would be introduced, but only in order to knock out targets discovered during reconnaissance missions as the campaign unfolded. There was no plan, according to this scenario, to reoccupy southern Lebanon on a long-term basis.

It's all been planned out and now, suddenly Condi Rice is talking about "restraint" and "diplomacy". But as the neocons know, diplomacy and restraint aren't a part of the agenda. Or as their article pointed out:

They said by that time even Mr. Bush will recognize the failure of relying solely on diplomacy in the face of Iran's nuclear weapons program.

And there you have it: Diplomacy and Iran don't mix. World War IV is getting underway. How dare Condi Rice try to slow things down!