{"id":1833,"date":"2004-05-26T11:43:14","date_gmt":"2004-05-26T16:43:14","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com\/archives\/1833.html"},"modified":"2004-05-26T11:43:14","modified_gmt":"2004-05-26T16:43:14","slug":"if-theyve-lost-perle","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/if-theyve-lost-perle\/","title":{"rendered":"If they’ve lost Perle…"},"content":{"rendered":"

Is it really possible that even Richard Perle, infamous neo-con and Rumsfeld confidant, is condemning the administration’s policies in Iraq<\/a>? Apparently so (via Salon<\/a>).<\/p>\n

One of the ideological architects of the Iraq war has criticized the U.S.-led occupation of the country as “a grave error.” <\/p>\n

Richard Perle, until recently a powerful adviser to U.S. Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, described U.S. policy in post-war Iraq as a failure. <\/p>\n

“I would be the first to acknowledge we allowed the liberation (of Iraq) to subside into an occupation. And I think that was a grave error, and in some ways a continuing error,” said Perle, former chair of the influential Defence Policy Board, which advises the Pentagon.<\/p>\n

With violent resistance to the U.S.-led occupation showing no signs of ending, Perle said the biggest mistake in post-war policy “was the failure to turn Iraq back to the Iraqis more or less immediately. <\/p>\n

“We didn’t have to find ourselves in the role of occupier. We could have made the transition that is going to be made at the end of June more or less immediately,” he told BBC radio, referring to the U.S. and British plan to transfer political authority in Iraq to an interim government on June 30. <\/p>\n

This public criticism of U.S. policy from one of the leading advocates of the war — and a firm political ally of U.S. President George W. Bush — indicates just how much Bush’s political fortunes are being damaged by post-war chaos.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I guess even Perle knows when to jump from a sinking ship.<\/p>\n

Any minute now, we’ll be hearing from conservatives who will no doubt complain that Perle is “aiding and abetting” the enemy with his rhetoric, and “putting American lives at risk”<\/a> by criticizing the Bush administration. Oh wait, I forgot that only applies to Democrats.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Is it really possible that even Richard Perle, infamous neo-con and Rumsfeld confidant, is condemning the administration’s policies in Iraq? Apparently so (via Salon). One of the ideological architects of the Iraq war has criticized the U.S.-led occupation of the country as “a grave error.” Richard Perle, until recently a powerful adviser to U.S. Defence […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[617],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1833","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1833","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1833"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1833\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1833"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1833"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1833"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}