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Entry: Happy Birthday, Dr. Hank Link: http://www.takimag.com/site/article/happy_birthday_dr_hank#1603 Post contents: Taki reports “When Kissinger was brought in for advice, it was already much too late” with respect to Iraq. One wonders at what point Kissinger would like Taki and the world at large to believe that he (Kissinger) was “brought in”? Was Dr. Henry brought in just after American troops entered Baghdad, when Cheney or Rumsfeld or somebody decided to fire General Jay Garner as viceroy of Iraq and replace him with Kissinger’s protégé and partner, Ambassador L. Paul “Jerry” Bremer III, the Managing Director of Kissinger Associates, Inc.? Is that when Kissinger entered the picture? If so, then we have a problem. Why? Because everything went downhill fast from that point, so fast that it almost seems as if someone were deliberately throwing a monkey wrench into the proceedings to accelerate the downward trajectory. Who in the Pentagon or at the White House was ultimately making the disastrous decisions which Bremer dutifully carried out that turned the nascent American occupation of Iraq into a ten alarm disaster, a disaster for which we and the Iraqis on the ground are paying the price today? Nominally, it was Douglas Feith and Paul Wolfowitz at the Pentagon, in association with Norman Podhoretz’s son-in-law, fellow Likudnik Elliott Abrams, who was (and remains) in charge of the Middle East desk at the National Security Council, but where does Dr. Henry fit into this puzzle? We know from Bob Woodward’s book, "State of Denial", that G.W. Bush “met privately with Kissinger every couple of months, making the former secretary the most regular and frequent outside adviser to Bush on foreign affairs.” Moreover, did not Bush’s mentor, the CEO of the Bush Administration, Dick Cheney, remark to Woodward that, “I probably talk to Henry Kissinger more than I talk to anybody else. He just comes by and I guess at least once a month, Scooter [Libby] and I sit down with him.” At least that is what Woodward states on page 406. Is Woodward making it up? For this and a myriad of other good reasons, a full scale Congressional investigation cries out to be undertaken of the entire “Operation Iraqi Freedom” affair from start to finish. Perhaps then we will we be able to determine if Dr. Henry has been given “a lousy rap” or if he deserves enormous behind-the-scenes credit for this unfolding fiasco. Patrick Foy Sent at: 2008 07 24