War in Iraq

The Doug Feith Primer

VS.

Liberal blogosphere or Bush admininstration hack: Who would you trust?

It’s been two years, so I can forgive people who went looking for information about Feith recently if they overlookedthis, what was one of the first progressive blogosphere forays into publishing, before it became the hot new thing to do. With Doug Feith’sexcuse opus coming out next month (for the love of God, don’t pay for the thing, steal it from somewhere or read over somebody’s shoulder), it occurs to me that it might be worth reminding people that there were, in fact, people on this story before anybody else could be paid to pay attention.

People likeABW, who put together an exhaustive timeline of all Feith’s missteps and mistakes in a Kos diary, such that you can go all the way back to 1996 to see how this mess got started.

People likeMatt Yglesias, who put the blame where it really belonged, on the Congress that did absolutely zero oversight of anything Feith and his cronies were doing.

People like Jack K atThe Grumpy Forrester who brought home why what Feith did isn’t just some silly insider Washington issue.

Anyone looking for information on Feith could do worse than to start there. Anyone looking for a counterweight to his 900-some pages of “I didn’t know nothing” and “the Bush ate my homework, see how unpopular he is now, it’s all his fault” and “mistakes were made” could do worse than to look to the people who participated in efforts to push this story before it was popular and widely accepted. Some of these posts go back to 2003, which in blogtime is prehistoric, I know, but the history’s worth knowing so the present mound of bullshit makes sense.

A.

12 thoughts on “The Doug Feith Primer”

  2. I love the fact that the #1 tag on the Amazon site is “Dumbest f_cking guy on the planet.” Everyone should go there and make and enter that tag (need to have an Amazon login) and sure that it can never be erased from the front page.

  3. “who published feith???”
    Had to be Regnery. Who else would publish such trash?

  4. “Had to be Regnery. Who else would publish such trash?”
    You haven’t been paying attention…There are no “reputable” publishing houses left…They all rush such swill into print…

  6. I love the fact that the #1 tag on the Amazon site is “Dumbest f_cking guy on the planet.”
    Why, thank you. 😉
    I added it first, in a form that I hoped wouldn’t get deleted by an overzealous Amazon person, and I’m glad to see it’s still there.
    Feith is actually being published by a non-Regnery outlet. Have to imagine he called in a few favours there. ThoughWar and Decision is probably the lamest title ever, which suggests that the poor editor given this heap of self-justifying crap was phoning it in.

  7. I was Doug Feith’s secretary in 1978-9 when he was a brand new associate at Fried, Frank, Harris, Shriver & Kampelman (the firm has since morphed into one with another name). I’ve been meaning to write up my impressions of him from that time for awhile now. Were I to do such a thing, where do you think I should post it? I have a 2 entry diary at Kos; I suppose I could put it there — any other ideas/suggestions?

  9. Nora, a Kos diary might be a good place to start. Be sure to send it over. Might make for interesting reading!
    My condolences on having to work with him. From what Karen Kwiatkowski says, it wasn’t fun.
    A.

  10. If we still had a constitutional republic, this… revolting excuse for a human being would be behind bars, along with his merry little band of stovepipers.

  11. I went to high school with Doug Feith. He was a suckup toady asshole then, and never changed.

  12. I went to high school with Doug Feith. He was a suckup toady asshole then, and never changed.

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