But it is you that have chosen to contradict Walt's thesis, and you have done so on the basis of the most trivial nonfact, that a Neocon gave Saddam, a nemesis of Israel, chemical weapons.

No, that would be not what I based my scepticism on. I base my scepticism on the fact that the neocons have a long history as a coherent group, a history that goes back to the Nixon administration, in which the bulk of the core actors received their political schooling. And that they have a well-defined domestic policy agenda to which Israel by all appearances is entirely incidental.

They are using Israel to further their purposes, not the other way around.

For a thorough discussion of several of the main figures, you can do worse than Dubose and Bernstein's Vice: Dick Cheney and the Hijacking of the American Presidency, which goes over Cheney's career and, in that process, touches upon most of the core neoconservative figures.

Or you could look into what the people who actually study the neoconservative faction have to say about their motives and agenda. With all due respect to the in-depth knowledge of your totemic authorities about US-Israel relations and the politics of the Near East, if you want to understand the internal power politics of the Beltway, you need to read people who study the Beltway, not people who study how the Beltway deals with a single, fairly minor, policy item.

Can it be said that your skepticism is based on a purely isolated event about which you made a false assumption.

It could be said. It would be wrong, but it could be said. It's a free country, after all.

You seem to be labouring under the delusion that the neoconservatives are a new thing that came into power with Bush the Lesser. I have no idea what gave you that idea, apart from neoconservative agit-prop, but these guys aren't a new and exciting development. They're the Nixon administration in drag.

- Jake

Friends come and go. Enemies accumulate.