"Thus her most memorable performance was less as foreign policy mandarin than as J. Edgar Hoover in drag."

Which is to say, "...as J. Edgar Hoover," full stop.

It always seems obvious when someone as incisive as Mr. Blumenthal points out such a consistent track record of failure to divine foreign policy, but it apparently escapes the notice of liberal commentators so completely, that they fail to warn each time a new, bad idea emerges.

To wit: The right was wrong on the cold war and Soviet menace,wrong on the CIA overthrow of Iran's government to install the Shah, wrong on the domino theory in Vietnam, wrong on the Panama Canal treaty, wrong on funding (legally or illegally) authoritarian regimes - Pinochet,Bin Laden,Saddam, to name a few, Wrong on sweeping Iraq's use of WMD under the rug in the 80-88 Iran-Iraq war, wrong to justify the use of those SAME WMD as a pretext for invading Iraq 20 odd years later, wrong about the very existence of those same WMD, wrong in philosophy and execution of the invasion of Iraq, wrong about elections equalling peace and democracy in the middle east, wrong about a connection between Iraq and Al-Qaida, wrong about unilateral military intervention elevating US prestige and power.

I wonder...will Liberal pundits continue ignoring the pattern, failing to point it out at each turn, until some future Sean Hannity obituary makes veiled reference to his eventual reservations, quietly made to friends, that the limited nuclear attack on Iran in late 2008, was a bad idea, inasmuch as it precipitated, the subsequent suitcase nuke attacks on Georgetown, DC, and Miami ? Hmmm ..

"[Y]ou also need to acknowledge that the Sandinista’s were brought screaming and kicking to the idea of free elections by international pressure of which Dr. Kirkpatrick was, in part, the author."

This quote from "Paul" is not only a mockery of recorded history, it's also a complete whitewash of Kirkpatrick's actual role in Nicaragua's torrid political and cultural climate in the 1980s. After the revolution, the Ortega brothers quickly determined that it was in the best interests of the FSLN to demonstrate to the world that the new government was capable of holding free elections -- hence the so-called Fundamental Statutes concerning political parties that were debated over and written into Nicaraguan law in 1983. As it turned out, about 400 elections observers from around the world (including the UK's Lord Chitnis) qualified the 1984 elections results as fair. Was Kirkpatrick -- or even a sign of her alleged "pressure" to hold free elections -- lingering anywhere in the general vicinity? Absolutely not.

If anything, Kirkpatrick's role from the start was to do everything she could to destabilize the revolutionary government from her perch as UN ambassador -- and even from that lofty position, she was unable to prevent the admission of Nicaragua to the UN Security Council in 1983. The rest is cold, calculated history, from her personal involvement in the secret funding of the contras (during which she agreed to collude with the Moonies to raise money) to her advocacy, as Blumenthal points out, of repressive military regimes throughout Central and South America. Addressing the crushing poverty that the majority of these countries' citizens felt under the iron fist of such colorful characters as Pinochet, Cristiani, Noriega, Cordova, Somoza and hordes more, Kirkpatrick once said that "because the miseries of traditional life are familiar, they are bearable to the ordinary people." Would that she could have known some of those miseries herself.

Comparing Thatcher's Britain to contemporary regimes Galtieri's Argentina, Iran or Iraq is stupid. OK, so Thatcher was overly impressed by authoritarianism abroad, but apart from within the Conservative Party she didn't practice it at home (and no, the miners' strikes and poll-tax protests aren't equivalent).

that drivel Kirkpatrick wrote. Father Francis assigned "Dictatorships and Double Standards" for his class Ethics and International Relations during the fall of 1982 at Georgetown. While Ms. Kirkpatrick did write that dreck while she was a professor at Georgetown, I got the very distinct impression that the Jesuit faculty and President, Father Healy, did not agree at all with her "double standards" and support of all dictatorships as long as they were anti-communist. I never met the woman but after reading her paper, I despised her and the Reagan administration with as much venegeance as they despised the Communists. There arrogance and disregard for "human rights" was/is criminal. I've never understood the Right's love for Reagan. Obviously, most of them had no real understanding about the evil of the members of his cabinet that not only included Jeanne Kirkpatrick but also Ed Meese, Don Regan, and the rest of the cabal. I pray she is now in a place where she knows the "truth".

Once again, an illuminating article that cuts to the heart of neo-conservative thinking and exposes it as racist, simplistic, wholly inconsistent with reality, and patently insane on its face. One of the things that became clear to me while reading this is neo-conservatism's pathological need to find enemies, and failing that, to invent them almost from whole cloth. It's really quite beyond cynical. It's a wholly depraved worldview that isn't concerned with alliances, treaties or, God help me, negotiation. As long as we hear in the USA think that we need to be the resident Bully on the block, this kind of filth will find ears. So I agree with what was said earlier about repudiating this kind of brain-dead, intellectually dishonest rhetoric. The other thing we need to do is continue to be informed so that STUPID PEOPLE aren't voted into places of authority like the White House. The state of the country and the state of the war in Iraq are stark illustrations of the failure of intellectual curiosity and imagination that we've allowed to take the reins of power for 6 years. Hopefully, we've learned from that.

No a stable democratic chile was destroyed by fascists when the majority poor through the democratic process made what the upper class regarded as impertinent demands. It THEN was TURNED into an authoritarian society, which it had not been before, and it has still not recovered.