David Brooks recently claimed in the New York Times that only "full-mooners" believe that neoconservative institutions like the Project for the New American Century (PNAC) have any influence on Bush Administration policy because PNAC "has a staff of five and issues memos on foreign policy." But PNAC disseminates the views not of its paid staffers, receptionists and interns, but of powerful Administration insiders like Paul Wolfowitz, Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld,

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Unfortunately for [neoconservatives], a political ideology can fail in the real world only so many times before being completely discredited. For at least two decades, in foreign policy the neocons have been wrong about everything. When the Soviet Union was on the verge of collapse, the hawks of Team B and the Committee on the Present Danger declared that it was on the verge of world domination. In the 1990s they exaggerated the power and threat of China, once again putting ideology ahead of the sober analysis of career military and intelligence experts. The neocons were so obsessed with Saddam Hussein and Yasir Arafat that they missed the growing threat of Al Qaeda. After 9/11 they pushed the irrelevant panaceas of preventive war and missile defense as solutions to the problems of hijackers and suicide bombers.

They said Saddam had WMDs. He didn't. They said he was in league with Osama bin Laden. He wasn't. They predicted that no major postwar insurgency in Iraq would occur. It did. They said there would be a wave of pro-Americanism in the Middle East and the world if the United States acted boldly and unilaterally. Instead, there was a regional and global wave of anti-Americanism.

Jackie (from Pomona) made it to the final stage of the Fulbright application process this year... almost. UC Berkeley was supposed to mail her application to the State Department, but FedEx never picked up UC Berkeley's applications due to a 'software error'. Usually, half of the students from Berkeley who make it to this stage end up with Fulbrights. The State department chose to not consider the 30 applications from Berkeley and has been exceedingly unsympathetic towards the students and undiplomatic with UC Berkeley. The Fulbright board has wanted to consider the students, but the State department has refused to change its position--until today. Now it seems they will let the Berkeley applications go through, as long as Berkeley pays for the awards. I think everything will work out for Jackie and the rest of the applicants, but this episode highlights two repeating themes of my existence: the mean spiritedness of the Bush admin towards California, and the incompetence of UC Berkeley’s administration. I’m contributing to Kerry’s campaign, and I’m going to graduate as soon as possible.

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/news/archive/2004/02/10/state2150EST0165.DTL

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/2004/02/05/BAGJE4PFAM1.DTL