Bush Shuffles the Neocon Deck
Thursday January 04th 2007, 8:17 pm

In an all too predictable game of musical chairs, the Bush neocons have decided to shuffle John Negroponte, the butcher of Honduras and member in good standing at the Council on Foreign Relations, off to the State Department to work under Condi, drop Zalmay Khalilzad, the PNAC flunky, into fill the space vacated by the unconfirmable John Bolton at the United Nations, and spin former admiral Mike McConnell, a director at Booz Allen Hamilton, where the neocon “World War Four” James Woolsey runs shop, into the top spook position as national intelligence director.

In regard to Negroponte’s CFR connections, David Eisenberg writes: “Like so many musical chairs, the CFR shuffles its members from one post to another, but their control over our nation’s foreign policy and institutions of power remains constant. This control will only break when enough Americans utilize their influence through the Congress—the nation’s most intended powerful government branch as spelled out in the Constitution —to rein in their power accumulating agenda, and get us back in adherence to the principles of limited government under our Republic.”

I’m not holding my breath.

It is also interesting to note that Negroponte is filling in for Robert Zoellick, who has departed for Wall Street, specifically Goldman Sachs, as it is natural for former government officials to work for the banksters and vice versa. If you lost your job due to NAFTA, take it up with Zoellick, who as a “free trade” (i.e., legalized robbery and looting) “special assistant” to Bush Senior when he was dancing the fandango with president Salinas of Mexico. Zoellick’s consultations made all the difference in darkening large sections of Michigan and Pennsylvania and ultimately sending jobs over to the “communist” slave plantation in China. Now former factory workers buy their shoes, manufactured by tireless Chinese zeks, at Walmart—that is if they have enough money to buy shoes.

“Zoellick is highly respected on Wall Street and by Corporate America at large,” writes Tom Barry. “Not only a highly effective government representative of U.S. capital, Zoellick has benefited from direct personal ties with the U.S. financial community and transnational corporations. He has directly worked in the highest echelons of the U.S. corporate community, including serving as an executive at Goldman Sachs. Before joining the Bush Jr. administration as a cabinet official in the capacity of the U.S. Trade Representative, Zoellick served on an advisory council at the Enron Corporation. In addition, Zoellick also served on the boards of such corporations as Alliance Capital, Jones Intercable, Said Holdings, and the Precursor Group.”

Enron, of course, is a nice touch, as it underscores the ethical vacuum at work in Washington.

Blogger Michael J.W. Stickings comments on Negroponte’s switch, essentially an on-paper demotion. “Why is he willing to make the move? Is he unhappy as DNI? If so, why? What does his move say about the position of DNI? Is it an impotent one? Regardless, he’ll now be deeply involved with Iraq, specifically with Bush’s ‘new’ Iraq strategy, soon to be announced. That may be the reason. Perhaps he thinks he can do more at State with respect to Iraq than as Bush’s chief briefer on intelligence.”

It may also have something to do with Negroponte’s curriculum vitae. He did, after all, play a key role in supporting the Contra death squads in Nicaragua and spent time back-slapping General Gustavo Alvarez Martínez, a former union-busting thug for Standard Fruit who elevated death squads into government offices in Honduras, most notably the bloody Battalion 3-16.

As usual, of course, such good work pays off, as Martínez was eventually employed as a “special consultant” to the Rand Corporation. “With the help of Nestor Sanchez of the Department of Defense, Alvarez landed a job working with Rand’s top anti-terrorism expert, Brian [Michael] Jenkins,” writes Gerry O’Sullivan. Jenkins bills himself as a “terrorism expert,” that is to say he makes the corporate media rounds talking up the “al-Qaeda” myth in service to the neocons.

Another Rand operative and former State Department official, James Dobbins, who “served” with Negroponte, told Reuters that putting him under Condi the Destroyer is in “some ways … putting Negroponte back where his true strength lies, which is as a career diplomat.”

In other words, Negroponte may be on the grooming track to replace Condi, disliked by one too many neocons, and thus the transformation at the State Department since the departure of Colin Powell, who rightly called the neocons “fucking crazies,” will be complete as the new target, Iran, looms in the gun sights of the neocons who are tutored in the murderous Machiavellian madness of post-Straussian philosophy mingled with a heaping dose of the totalitarian demagoguery of the Nazi jurist, Carl Schmitt.

Once again, the Bush neocons, or rather the neocons who selected Bush, are turning the tables. For most of us, this is pretty drab and lackluster stuff, especially with more important business afoot, for instance Lindsay Lohan going under the knife. Most Americans cannot be bothered to follow the twists and turns of their government, even if it translates into additional murder, mayhem, and economic and social disaster, right here in the neighborhood, and sooner before later.

Come that inevitability, the neocons will throw up yet another hobgoblin—worse than Osama and al-Zarqawi—a city or two will be attacked in the heartland, and the populace, forever easy prey for such trickery, will get back to where they were in the months following September 11, 2001.