by Sam Parry
Reprinted from ConsortiumNews.com.
The media frenzy surrounding the Terri Schiavo case is new evidence of the American Right’s ability to dominate national news cycles, a power that has become possibly the most intimidating force in modern U.S. politics. In the Schiavo case, however, the Right has discovered that even its impressive message machinery sometimes can push the envelope too far.
Updated February 10, 2007
Thirty years, two months and five days after North Carolina Senator Sam Ervin gaveled to order the Senate Watergate hearings, congress opened hearings into the use of "intelligence" to justify military action in Iraq. 1973 also marked the death of Leo Strauss, a little-known German émigré philosopher who fled Nazi Germany and found a home at the University of Chicago. While at Chicago, Strauss and mathematician Albert Wohlstetter trained a number of students who themselves became, or whose students became important figures in the neoconservative movement. Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz studied with Strauss protégé Allan Bloom, and earned his Ph.D. from the U of C in 1972. William Kristol, chairman of the currently influential conservative advocacy group the Project for a New American Century (PNAC), studied with Strauss student Harvey Mansfield. NSC southwest Asia specialist Zalmay Khalilzad earned his Ph.D. under Wohlstetter in 1979, 10 years after Ahmed Chalabi, the "man who would be king" of Iraq.
