Baker's Return = Cheney's Heartburn

by Jim Lobe
December 13, 2003

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In returning, Baker, the longtime consiglieri to the Bush family whose last mission on its behalf was to secure all of Florida's electoral votes for George W. in 2000 regardless of the state's actual voting laws or how people actually voted, made what was already a bad week for administration hawks much, much worse.

<snip>

"If you deal with Baker, you know you're going to get what you need," said the source in a phrase that must have sent chills down the backs of the neo-conservatives and their right-wing fellow-travelers, most notably Cheney himself.

<snip>

But the threats posed by Baker's presence to the hawks, especially the neo-conservatives both in and out of the administration, goes far beyond personal score-settling in which Baker has historically shown little interest; they are strategic. By all accounts, Baker believes their dominance of US foreign policy since Sept. 11, 2001, and especially the Iraq invasion, has been disastrous for the country and, perhaps more important, for Bush Jr.'s reelection.

<snip>

Baker, like other realists, has also been deeply skeptical, not to say incredulous, about neo-conservative ambitions to "remake the face of the Middle East" by exporting democracy. Long associated with Big Oil, Baker would find the radical change in the region of the kind promoted by the neo-cons unacceptably risky and destabilizing.

http://www.antiwar.com/ips/lobe121303.html
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Very interesting analysis. Suggests cleavages in the conservative bloc that we may not yet fully comprehend.

that the "unity" of the neo-cons is less stable than people may realize. I've been reading for months about inuendos, factions and brawls of the HalfBush administration. They resemble more a medieval court than a 21st century governing body.

I suspect the PNAC "unity" is paper-thin, as well. Read William Kristol's latest scathing review of the war in Iraq. (Interesting, isn't it? How quickly they turn).

Next, we have the war/oil industry, represented by Crash Cart Cheney. I would assume they are a pretty unified group, since the Almighty Dollar is a pretty powerful force.

Then we have the religious fanatics. I don't know anything about them, but I suspect they would be the most unified of them all.

So now a new destabilizing force is moving in by the name of James Baker. If anything, he's going to be on Bush's side, although I don't exactly know what that means.

Don't expect anything good to come from this man.