Cross posted at the front pages of ePluribus, My Left Wing and Pen and Sword. Also at Kos.
Not content with having helped mislead America into its Iraq fiasco, the neoconservative Prince of Darkness Richard Perle has taken a key role in steering the U.S. into yet another counter productive war, this time with Iran.
Laura Rozen of The American Prospect reports:
Unchastened by the catastrophe of the Iraq war or the setback delivered to the White House and Republicans in the midterm elections in part as a result of it, Iran hawks have organized new efforts to promote U.S. support for regime change in Tehran.
Among the latest efforts is the creation earlier this month of the Iran Enterprise Institute, a privately funded nonprofit drawing not just its name but inspiration and moral support from leading figures associated with the American Enterprise Institute. The Iran Enterprise Institute is directed by a newly arrived Iranian dissident whose cause has recently been championed by AEI fellow and former Pentagon advisor Richard Perle.
Land o’ Goshen. Global replace “q” with “n” and we’ve got Perle trying to pull the same shinola with Iran that he pulled with Iraq.
Perle was a staunch supporter of Ahmad Chalabi, the head of the expatriate Iraqi National Congress, a group that Perle and other neocons believed could take control of Iraq once Saddam Hussein was removed from power. Now Perle is backing a newly arrived Iranian dissident named Amir Abbas Fakhravar. Apparently, Perle picked the 31 year-old Fakhravar to be his Iranian paramour because he couldn’t find a suitable Farsi-speaking teenager, but what the heck–at Perle’s age, when it comes to choosing political bedfellows, the difference between 31 and 13 is negligible.
The Iran Enterprise Institute was formed over the course of a three-day meeting in Washington last month. In attendance, along with Fakhravar, were the son of the deposed Shah of Iran, a prominent Dallas-based Persian rug dealer, and “several other young Iranian oppositionists.” Rozen didn’t report just how young these other Iranian opportunists were, but it’s fairly safe to assume that they’re younger than Fakhravar, and spent most of their lives in this country, which means they know less about what’s going on in Iran than you could store in a bumblebee’s bladder.
But when you consider that the Generation X yahooligans on young Mister Bush’s National Security Agency who don’t think weapons of mass destruction were a factor in the Cold War and say things like, “Arms control? What’s that?” you get an appreciation of how a handful of little Iranian rascals can become a legitimate foreign policy lobbying organization in Washington D.C. in the course of three days. Especially when they have a sugar daddy like Richard Perle.
The Iran Enterprise Institute is looking for office spaces in D.C., and has applied for $3 million in State Department grants to back its expenses. With the backing of Papa Perle, there’s a good chance they’ll get it. What the heck, these days, $3 million here or there in the federal budget isn’t enough to get a sheet of toilet paper wet.
Too bad your local school system doesn’t have a Richard Perle to go to bat for it, huh? If we’re going to throw $3 million at children, wouldn’t you like those children to be your children, and not the late Shah of Iran’s children who want their daddy’s property holdings back?
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Commander Jeff Huber, U.S. Navy (Retired) writes from Virginia Beach, Virginia. Read his commentaries at ePluribus Media and Pen and Sword.