Eric Alterman meets Paul Wolfowitz who talks about Cheney

Eric Alterman just met Paul Wolfowitz at a party.  He just wrote a juicy-ass blog about it:

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/7127721/#050308

A few nuggets pinched out below the fold:

7)  Hold onto your underpants, Jeff Jarvis:  When I asked Wolfowitz who he read outside of official channels that he found particularly profitable, he reeled off the names of a bunch of Iraqi blogs.  I asked him if he read Juan Cole.  He made a munched up face like his sushi had gone bad.  He said that yes, he had read him, but did not do so much, because of all the--I forget his exact words, but I'm thinking "awful crap" -through which he had to slog in order to get the information that Cole presented.  I said I thought it would be useful since even if one disagrees, Cole certainly knows what he's talking about, and his view is closer to the rest of the world's than are those published in the MSM.  He made another bad sushi face.

Wolfowitz don't like no Juan Cole.

Also, Wolfowitz on Dick Cheney:

9)  Wolfowitz insists that the talk of Dick Cheney's power is way overblown.  He thinks Cheney is extremely respectful of the chain of command in every area and exercises what executive authority he has less frequently than did Al Gore.  He says he thinks Cheney thinks of himself as Bush's "top staffer."  I cannot tell you, from his body language, whether he really believed this.  He gave no hints that he didn't.

This blows my mind.  There are moments in Alterman's piece where Wolfowitz expresses an understandable rigidity when talking of his bosses, so I'm not sure if it's just him being a good soldier or not when he said this.  I don't know.

Regardless of his publicly expressed sensitivity to Palestinian suffering, Wolfowitz to me is part of the very essence of the disaster wrought by this administration.  Could he be completely deluded on Cheney?  Is it possible Cheney is not as powerful as we think?

If Wolfowitz believes this, and he is wrong, does this mean the neocons are fueled by an astonishing amount of self-deceipt as to be blind to the utter terribileness of the Bush/Cheney lie machine?

•  It was ...

  just a conversation at a party between two near acquaintances, so I wouldn't read too much into it.  I thoroughly enjoyed reading Eric Alterman's blog entry, and thank you for leading me to it.

  by SusanHu on Tue Mar 08, 2005 at 08:33:52 PM PDT

•  I think they arrived at the policy of invading

  Iraq with different motivations, and they explain it to themselves with different narratives. Plus, their public explanation is somewhat coordinated and disciplined, but the discipline breaks down. I think it breaks down around Wolfowitz and Rumsfeld quite frequently. I do think he is the one person with the idealistic motives in this, but it doesn't excuse him for having no grasp of reality and no appreciation of the destruction his war has caused in Iraq. As far as Cheney and Rumsfeld are concerned, I think their motives are entirely venal though not identical. I am sure that Cheney's motives can be found in the minutes to the Enron energy meetings with Ken Lay, which included maps of Iraqi oil fields. As for Rummy, he participates actively in the neocon dream of exercising raw American power for power's sake.

  by lecsmith on Tue Mar 08, 2005 at 08:58:54 PM PDT

•  In all fairness to Wolfowitz ...

  The man has a 24/7 bad sushi face.

  by Bob Love on Tue Mar 08, 2005 at 09:57:03 PM PDT