TPMMuckraker provides an excellent primer on one of the Iraq war's most enthusiastic boosters, fellow neoconservative and former lobbyist Ralph 'Randy' Scheunemann, now serving as John McCain's foreign policy advisor. (He's the one who led the McCain campaign's confusing attack on Obama about how he'd prefer to "lose a war that we are winning than lose an election.") In short: Scheunemann backed the call for President Bush to respond to 9/11 by attacking Saddam, actively lobbied on behalf of the now-disgraced Iraqi exile Ahmed Chalabi, declared that there was "no doubt" that Saddam possessed weapons of mass destruction, and reportedly helped persuade 10 former Soviet bloc nations that if they backed the invasion they'd be allowed to join Nato. "It's kind of astonishing that McCain continues to be taken seriously on Iraq when his closest adviser has a track record on the issue as atrocious as Scheunemann's," writes Zachary Roth.
Meanwhile, in other 'Where Are They Now?' news, fellow neoconservative Richard Perle appears to be actively taunting his numerous critics by exploring oil deals in Iraq despite the Bush administration's expressed opposition to such deals there.
.jpg?w=600)
