And they never ever plan for being wrong. More Vanity Fair:

“Everyone was against the elections,” Dahlan says. Everyone except Bush. “Bush decided, ‘I need an election. I want elections in the Palestinian Authority.’ Everyone is following him in the American administration, and everyone is nagging Abbas, telling him, ‘The president wants elections.’ Fine. For what purpose?”

The elections went forward as scheduled. On January 25, Hamas won 56 percent of the seats in the Legislative Council.

Few inside the U.S. administration had predicted the result, and there was no contingency plan to deal with it. “I’ve asked why nobody saw it coming,” Condoleezza Rice told reporters. “I don’t know anyone who wasn’t caught off guard by Hamas’s strong showing.”

“Everyone blamed everyone else,” says an official with the Department of Defense. “We sat there in the Pentagon and said, ‘Who the fuck recommended this?’ ”

Q And Senator McCain, where would you like the President to campaign with you?

THE PRESIDENT: As I told you, you know, if he wants me to show up, I will. If he wants me to say, "You know, I'm not for him," I will. Whatever he wants me to do, I want him to win. And, you know, Wolf, I don't know where. I mean, look --

SENATOR McCAIN: Could I start out with --

THE PRESIDENT: I'm focusing on, you know, protecting America, and succeeding in Iraq, and dealing with the North Korea, and dealing with the Iranian, and dealing with the issues around the world where we're making a difference in terms of keeping peace. I want to get this in as good as a position as possible so that when John McCain is the President -- and he will be -- he can deal with these issues in a way that yields peace.

Not really germane to Glenn's post but it is so bleakly amusing that in a press conference to announce the new leader of the Republican party, Bush rudely interrupts a question addressed to McCain to blather this string of embarrassing nonsense. "The Iranian"?

John W. McCain, playing second fiddle to Mr. 19% who can't even pronounce "Iran" or use articles correctly.

It would really help if they didn't occasionally admit that they believe in lying to the public in order to get what they want, and being the intellectual heirs of Strauss and the "noble lie" this is a bit different from the usual sort of political lying.

Bush did it today actually, while endorsing McCain:

Q I wanted to ask about the -- the voters, according to a lot of the exit polls, seem to be searching for change this year. And I'd like to ask both of you -- excuse me -- I'd like to ask both of you how the Republican Party, which has been here for eight years, is going to make the case that you're going to provide the change that the voters seem to want, both on Iraq and the economy?

THE PRESIDENT: Let me start off by saying that in 2000 I said, vote for me, I'm an agent of change. In 2004, I said, I'm not interested in change -- I want to continue as President. Every candidate has got to say "change." That's what the American people expect.

(from the white house transcript)

What's worse is that this kind of thing now passes without comment. Not only do we expect political leaders to lie to us, we let them admit it without comment.

And then Bush follows immediately with:

And the good news about our candidate is, there will be a new President, a man of character and courage -- but he's not going to change when it comes to taking on the enemy. He understands this is a dangerous world, and I understand we better have steadfast leadership who has got the courage and determination to pursue this enemy, so as to protect America.

So McCain will talk about change to get elected, but the "good news" is that he will not change US foreign policy whatever he promises to do.

You've missed the point.

I personally don't claim to know who is more right or wrong, better or worse in the very long (longer than 6 years BTW) struggle between FARC and the nominal Columbian government. I somehow doubt the Columbian government is some exemplar of freedom and liberal democratic principles.

I'm simply not taking Fred Hiatt's word for it. Neo-cons are consistently wrong about everything and never ever learn from their mistakes. That's not even hyperbole as every single foreign policy debacle shows.

Read the vanity fair article conservativeslayer posted. The most amusing nugget was the Fatah commander musing:

“You know,” he says, “since the takeover, we’ve been trying to enter the brains of Bush and Rice, to figure out their mentality. We can only conclude that having Hamas in control serves their overall strategy, because their policy was so crazy otherwise.”

The problem is that the Serious Adults who have been running US foreign policy since Vietnam have absolutely no credibility and Hiatt is not insignificant among them.

Implicit in neo-conservativism. I remember reading the original PNAC manifesto, and being struck by the aggrieved tone of self-entitlement they had about what they saw as the glaring deficiencies in America's military capacities.

I don't remember their specific complaints per se, but it was a list of potentially useful force projection weapons that are basically only useful once you have concluded the world is your rightful playground.

There is simply no where that should be beyond the reach of US forces by air, sea or land (or space). Utter strategic dominance is their goal.

Once you make that decision, then suddenly not having an 8th or 9th aircraft carrier in some faraway sea becomes a "hole" in your nation's defenses. Suddenly the inability to deploy attack helicopters in central africa in 48 hours or less is a "problem" to be solved.

It's just great. Kudos.