Feith Unmasked: Tenet & Wolfowitz Accused.

Pat Lang has irrefutable credentials as an Arabist and Middle East expert, and that nixed his chances with Feith as an advisor to the Pentagon in the run-up to the Iraq Mess. Feith is a notorious Richard Perle acolyte and even wannabe, but Lang uses economic language to unmask an arrogant functionary in a description of his job interview with Feith, who was eating a sandwich to indicate contempt during the meeting. Coincidentally, the only time I met Feith's control officer Benjamin Netanyahu, he was also eating in public, a sign of his kind that exudes condescension for those in his presence.

The Pentagon in the run-up to the war seems to have abhorred considering alternative scenarios.

And after the fall of Baghdad, Gen. Jay Garner and the Task Force he had assembled in Iraq was also summarily called off the job by the Supremo Generalissimo-wannabe Donald Rumsfeld, who in Cobra II is described as nixing the hundreds of man-years of expertise on the Middle East in the Garner group because "we need fresh thinking." Subsequently, hyper-sycophant Jerry Bremer and Middle East expert Khalilzad were nominated as co-ambassadors, but Bremer complained and Zal was canned. Wouldn't want linguistic knowledge and vast expertise as part of the mix in the post Baghdad conquest mode. That would not fit in with the Rumsfeld modus operandi.

Wolfowitz does not come off much better. But unlike Feith, Paul did have some foreign policy expertise---though again, he shared the Israeli viewpoint more often than not.

Even Tenet is found prevaricating in his memoirs about the notorious "Curveball," a source so pungent that was used as the only indicator of a key point in Colin Powell's UN speech.

Suffice it to say that there is more than enough culpability to occupy historians for decades, and GWB does not come out looking like a Harvard MBA management guru in this rear-view mirror exercise.

Or maybe Harvard MBAs are overrated?