I’d prefer Kissinger. . .

Laura Rozen excerpts a Salon interview with Sy Hersh:

Jacoby: Is there someone who is the Henry Kissinger in this administration?

Hersh: Oh, believe me, I pray for one [clasps his hands and looks beseechingly upward]. Wouldn’t it be great if the reality was that they were lying about WMD, and they really didn’t believe that democracy would come when they invaded Iraq, and you could go to war with 5,000 troops, a few special forces, a few bombs and a lot of American flags, and Iraq would fold, Saddam would be driven out, a new Baath Party would emerge that’s moderate? Democracy would flow like water out of a fountain. These guys believe it. They believe WMD. There’s no fallback with these guys. These guys are utopians. They’re like Trotskyites. They believe in permanent revolution. They really believe. They believe that they could go in with few forces. They believed that once they went in it would happen quick. Iran would get the message. What they call occupied Lebanon would get the lesson. Even the Saudis would change.

Amen.

At least one of my blog-mates disagrees with me on this, but I was GLAD when they picked Negroponte for the ambassador post. Matt Yglesias wrote the case against Negroponte here. He’s as bad as they come, the worst Reagan realist you could imagine. But he’s not crazy; there’s no indication that he believes in democracy AT ALL, much less that he’s drank the neocon Kool-Aid. I’ll take straight evil over the mind-bending ineptitude that the rest of the team has generated.