Richard Perle

"I never worked with Judy Miller," said Thomas Ricks, Washington Post military correspondent and Fiasco author.

Ricks was defending the Post's coverage during the run-up to the Iraq War, and drew some laughter from the New York Times-toting crowd last night at the 92nd Street Y.

The occasion was a panel discussion moderated by veteran journalist Robert McNeil, and featuring former Assistant Secretary of Defense Richard Perle Perle, documentary Filmmaker Martin Smith, and Ricks. Prior to the heated discussion on the war, two clips were shown from "America at a Crossroads," a week-long PBS series that premieres in April, that features Smith and Perle.

Perle, who still defends the invasion of Iraq, took plenty of criticism from the floor: there were several shouts of "liar," a fair amount of hissing, and the ejection of one audience member who was shouting about how the Bush administration benefited from 9/11.

But later, during a press Q&A, Perle took the opportunity to swipe back at Ricks.

(As Perle, Smith and McNeil sat down for the post-panel Q&A, Ricks passed through already in his overcoat. Ricks said that as a reporter, he shouldn't be up there answering questions).

"I didn't have a chance inside to defend my friend Judy Miller," said Perle. "I don't know if the New York Times is still here."

"Judy reported, with the great skill she possesses, what she was being told by people who had access to the information, who believed what they were telling her. The derision that she has suffered, because some of that information is inaccurate, is an appalling way to judge--particularly--a fellow journalist.

"I think that anyone who goes back over what Judy was writing will find that it was professionally sourced, and accurately reported. I was following what she were writing, and I knew what people in the administration, and elsewhere, were saying, based on the information that was available to them. I think that she has been dealt with unfairly. It particular pains me that Tom--that a remark would come from a fellow journalist."

-Michael Calderone

Richard Perle is back! The man is resilient. He was around in the '70s and '80s and, between journeys to his sock in France, the Prince of Darkness was sure around in the enfant siecle as well. These days he is holding forth on Baker-Hamilton in the pages of the Times and the WSJ. I.e., space they could be giving to, say, Kenneth Pollack or Ken Adelman, is going to him.

I find it's wise to keep a copy of Perle's book An End to Evil (penned with fellow AEIer David Frum three years ago), close at hand. Has helped me through many a crisis.

"The gloomsayers... have been proven wrong when they predicted the United States would sink into a forlorn quagmire in Iraq... The aftermath of war is always messy and often bloody... Post-Saddam Iraq has emerged from more than three decades of totalitarian rule and mass murder... Should anyone have been surprised that it took the United States a few weeks to get the lights working?..."

Just how wrong were the gloomsayers?

"Like General Barry McCaffrey, they predicted a military disater in which the United States could potentially suffer, 'bluntly, a couple to 3,000 casualties.'"

A year ago neocons Richard Perle and Michael Rubin and the former Israeli Ambassador Dore Gold and an Israeli general had a panel at the American Enterprise Institute, and released an elaborate booklet with colored charts inside, putting forward the idea that Israel needs defensible borders. Yes, Gaza was being given back, but there were hills in Judea and Samaria, as Perle put it—that's the West Bank to most of us—that were within 15 miles or so of Tel Aviv, and so Tel Aviv is vulnerable to rocket attack. Ergo, Israel will need to command the ridgelines in any contemplated Palestinian state.

Of course since then missiles have been fired on the Israeli town of Sderot from Gaza, and, in the latest outbreak of violence, from Lebanon onto Haifa. A lot more than 15 miles. And of course Israel was attacked by Iraq in 1991 from a distance of 250 miles, and Iran is within 1000 miles, and threatening to get nuclear weapons. You can imagine the anxiety in El Paso and Detroit if the Mexicans and Canadians were committed to our destruction, or if we had become convinced that they were. As Perle pointed out, these same concerns were raised by Sen. Henry Jackson, 30 years ago. The anxieties never end, and neither does the violence.

Does any other state have a right to feel anxiety about its borders?

Peter Voskamp, the editor of the Block Island (R.I.) Times, has reaffirmed my report that there was political pressure to keep Walt & Mearsheimer, the authors of the bombshell paper criticizing the Israel lobby, from speaking at the Naval War College in Newport 2 weeks back:

The [Israel lobby] paper was essentially off-limits for discussion at last week's forum. The [War College] Public Affairs Office confirmed that the college had received pressure from unnamed Congressmen to cancel the professors' appearance.

Voskamp is an enterprising journalist. As a grad student at University of Texas/Austin 3-1/2 years ago, he interviewed Admiral Bobby Ray Inman, the former deputy director of the CIA, now a professor of national policy at UT, and asked him whether oil interests were pushing for war in Iraq.  read more »

The American Enterprise Institute has been all over the New York Times this week. First it was Sally Satel, resident scholar, on the Op-Ed page Monday, saying Let's have a free market for the sale of human organs. Then yesterday it was Christina Hoff Sommers, giving the lead quotation in a House & Home section about men fighting for hideaway spaces in their homes.

The AEI is bacccck! The thinktank that has suffered such thinkability issues, that gave us Dick Cheney and John Bolton and Richard Perle and on and on and helped bring somewhere between 100,000 and 200,000 deaths to Iraq, that George Bush said had given him more brains than any other organization—the AEI is putting its best foot forward. Maybe its only foot: its women scholars, the softer foot, the one that stamps the ground about political correctness.

I'm not saying they shouldn't be in the Times. Let 100 flowers bloom. But maybe their i.d. slug should say, the AEI,whose scholars promoted the war in Iraq.

In a speech about his book 31 Days that he gave last month at the Ford Library (and C-Span broadcasted yesterday), Barry Werth made the interesting point that in 1974, when Rumsfeld and Cheney were making their first inroads at the White House as officials of the Ford Administration and Richard Perle was throwing himself into Scoop Jackson's presidential hopes, George W. Bush was drinking too much in Cambridge and trying to get into Harvard Business School.

Werth was underscoring a key fact about our humble president: he lacked political education. Those qualities that Bill Clinton had in spades—immersion in the game from a young age, the insane desire to step up to the plate himself, endless study of the history of our politics—well, George Bush postponed that experience out of goofy entitlement. Clinton screwed up in his own ways, but as a keen student of politics he did choose very able aides.

Bush has good political instincts and got a good political primer as Texas governor, but his responsibilities as president seemed to overwhelm him, and he knew it. Later in his speech, Werth said that being a president is a very "isolated" job, and a president is subject to the influences of those with whom he (or she?) surrounds himself. In this case, people with far more political education, like Cheney, Rumsfeld and Perle. All of whom just happened to be extremists.

It's been more than a week since Brooklyn D.A. Joe Hynes threatened to sue Harpers Magazine and writer Chris Ketcham over a piece that accused him, among other sins, of fudging his legal residence. In honor of Bush Administration ally Richard Perle's ulimately empty libel threats against Seymour Hersh, we'll be checking in occasionally with Hynes's office over whether he'll be taking evidence of his residence to court.

D.A. office spokesman Jerry Schmetterer said he expects a retraction. "If they give the retraction we're not going to file a suit."  read more »

And by the way, why are officials of the D.A.'s office dealing with a libel suit that looks to me like personal, not public, business?

Eleana Benador wants right-wing hawks to look nice on television."I'm very meticulous," said Ms.  read more »