Can we call for a moratorium on this phrase?
A prominent member of the Bush administration called for regime change in regard to that most evil leader, Gerhard Schröder of Germany:
A newspaper in Germany quoted a Pentagon adviser as saying the best thing Gerhard Schröder could do to ease relations with the US over Iraq would be to quit. "It would be best if he resigned," Richard Perle said.
(Never mind that messy bit about Schröder having just been democratically re-elected.)
You’ll have to scroll down to the end of the article to find this, though. It’s buried at the end of an article about how the Bush administration is calling for regime change in the United States Senate. Except that the Senators trying to tamp down his war fever are as likely to be Republican as Democrats. One wonders what kind of treatment Dubya has in store for the likes of Richard Lugar and Chuck Hagel. Presumably regime change.
Posted at 10:37 PM
Just one problem. Richard Perle is not a member of the Bush administration. As Chairman of the Defense Policy Board for the Department of Defense, he is an prominent and influential advisor.
In the last years of the Clinton administration James Carville and Paul Begala said some pretty outrageous things once they were on the outside. You couldn’t say that they spoke for Clinton, even though he had some sympathy for what they were saying, because they weren’t technically part of the administration anymore.
Same kind of thing is going on here.
Posted by Martin at 11:00 PM, October 1, 2002 [Link]