So Rudy Giuliani has just hired Norman Podhoretz to be his "Senior Foreign Policy Advisor." I guess that means his campaign will now enjoy direct access to keen insights like these:
Podhoretz is the Brooklyn-born, street-fighting kid who traveled through a long phase of left-liberalism to a pugilistic belief in America's power to redeem the world, one bomb at a time. Today, he is a bristling gray ball of aggression, here to declare that the Iraq war has been "an amazing success." He waves his fist and declaims, "There were WMD, and they were shipped to Syria. ... This picture of a country in total chaos with no security is false. It has been a triumph. It couldn't have gone better." He wants more wars, and fast. He is "certain" Bush will bomb Iran, and "thank God" for that.
Got that? The Iraq war couldn't have gone better! Needless to say, that speech was very popular with the conservative base. There's also Podhoretz' long essay in the latest issue of Commentary, "The Case for Bombing Iran," to consider.
And what about Giuliani's new "Chief Foreign Policy Advisor," Charles Hill? Well, Hill was George Shultz's assistant back when the Reagan administration was orchestrating arms shipments to Iran in the 1980s. According to the Walsh report, Hill withheld evidence about the State Department's role from investigators--although criminal charges were never filed. Hmmm... Here's a bit more on Hill's substantive views, which are considerably more nuanced than Podhoretz's (a low bar, to be sure).
--Bradford Plumer