Nickolas Kozloff’s piece is nothing more or less than an attempt to mislead readers about the mission of IRI. He has not contacted IRI to learn about our work, has not seen an IRI program, and undoubtedly has not talked to people who have benefited from IRI’s help. He portrays IRI’s work as an effort to interfere in foreign countries, conveniently omitting that IRI’s work, like that of the National Democratic Institute (NDI), has been funded by successive administrations, Democrat and Republican, since our founding almost 25 years ago.

He quotes Ghassan Atiyyah, a former institute grant recipient, as saying he parted ways with IRI over his criticism of the Bush administration’s handling of the war. If Kozloff had asked IRI he would have learned that IRI staff working with Mr. Atiyyah in Iraq were also critical of U.S. government efforts. He also fails to explain that after Mr. Atiyyah completed work for the grant, IRI recommended him to the National Endowment for Democracy for further funding.

If Kozloff had bothered to ask he would have learned that Chevron has also contributed money to NDI, as has Lockheed Martin. Contrary to Kozloff’s assertion, John McCain hardly needs IRI to extend his foreign policy knowledge. Finally, Kozloff’s claim that IRI and Senator McCain were at the center of the Iraq invasion is, like the rest of his screed, silly and baseless.

It would be interesting to know what, or if, Brzezinski was thinking when he made that remark. It could be interpreted as giving a shot of dutch courage to Israel’s myopic visionaries. Given his long-running love affair with delusional ivory tower claptrap (his Blueprint for World Dictatorship finishes up in much the same time warp as The Protocols), it’s handy to remember that when Brzezinski is wrong he’s very very wrong.
Wiki:
“He also supported intervention in Vietnam to counter Chinese leader Mao Zedong’s claim that the United States was a paper tiger.”

Apart from taking the spotlight off Israel’s crimes in Gaza and West Bank, this is all about pretending that the invasion of completely disarmed Iraq was a war, in an unconvincing attempt to lend some credibility to the idle threats America makes during drunken bouts of gunbarrel diplomacy. Why they even bother pretending that an invasion of Lebanon would have any military significance at all is beyond me. All an invasion of Lebanon will do is confirm the growing perception that America’s eerily inept ‘military solution’ bumpkins are still the slow-learners and craven cowards we suspected them to be. They’ve done, and been done by, Lebanon before.

But then conveniently (and inconveniently) forgetting are the only things at which McCain truly excels.