About how many things can one stupid Neocon be wrong?

When you’re talking PNAC plus Weekly Standard, apparently the number is limitless.

Middle East expert Brain-addled neocon Weekly Standard warmonger/Chief PNAC fruitcake Bill Kristol makes the case for launching attacks against Iran, claiming that they would cause the people of Iraq to rise up against the regime.

This morning on Fox, Bill Kristol continued to escalate his calls for war against Iran, stating, ?We can try diplomacy. I?m not very hopeful about that. We have to be ready to use force.? Kristol claimed the people of Iran would embrace ?the right use of targeted military force.? He added that military force could ?trigger changes in Iran,? causing them to embrace regime change.

Kind of like the kid in Empire of the Sun, cheering the P-51s striking the Japanese airfield next to his concentration camp. Think Progress has video at the link above, if you feel like throwing up.

Of course, this is the same Bill Kristol who in April 2003 sneered at the notion that Sunnis and Shiites in Iraq might engage in sectarian violence against the other, decrying it as “pop sociology“:

“There?s been a certain amount of pop sociology in America ? that the Shia can?t get along with the Sunni and the Shia in Iraq just want to establish some kind of Islamic fundamentalist regime. There?s almost no evidence of that at all. Iraq?s always been very secular.”

(At approximately 9:19 into the audio)

No evidence, except for the past 40 years of Sunni-inflicted atrocities against Iraq’s Shiites, and the proliferation of Shiite Islamist political parties based in Iran, waiting for Saddam’s regime to fail.

Heckuva call, Billie.

Attacks by alien powers almost invariably cause a country’s people to rally to defend the regime. Iraq was an anomoly because the large majority of its people were ethnic or sectarian groups which had been brutally suppressed by a regime constituted by a small minority. Yet Kristol believes that a Western power launching attacks against (yet another) Muslim power, even as the Israel (which rightly or wrongly is viewed in the Muslim world as a US surrogate) is enmeshed in a bloody and highly visible conflict with Hezbollah, will cause its people to rise up against its government in support of those attacks??? Where does the PNAC purchase its crack?

It’s difficult to imagine one man being so wrong on two things of such vital importance. People suffering from Kristol’s lack of perspicacity ought to consider employment outside of punditry or policy formation, perhaps driving one of those trucks which suction the shit out of port-a-johns.

Update: via C&L, Arthur points out that even the normally batshit-crazy Hitchens isn’t buying Kristol’s warmongering on Iran.