{"id":301,"date":"2007-06-04T10:17:52","date_gmt":"2007-06-04T15:17:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/profcutler.com\/wordpress_blog\/?p=301"},"modified":"2007-06-04T10:17:52","modified_gmt":"2007-06-04T15:17:52","slug":"wurmser-outed-or-ousted","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/profcutler.com\/wordpress_blog\/?p=301","title":{"rendered":"Wurmser: Outed or Ousted?"},"content":{"rendered":"
In a post last week<\/title>In <a href=\"https:\/\/profcutler.com\/wordpress_blog\/?p=300\">a post last week<\/a>, I suggested that David Wurmser was the likely “Cheney aide” <a href=\"http:\/\/www.thewashingtonnote.com\/archives\/002145.php\">rumored by Steven Clemons<\/a> to be circulating word that Cheney did not support Secretary of State Rice’s diplomatic overtures to Iran.<\/p>\n<p>On Friday, Helene Cooper of the <em>New York Times<\/em>–who <a href=\"https:\/\/profcutler.com\/wordpress_blog\/?p=211\">wrote an entire article about Wurmser in December 2006 without ever using his name<\/a>–finally <a href=\"http:\/\/www.iht.com\/bin\/print.php?id=5965173\">put a name into the game<\/a>: David Wurmser.<\/p>\n<blockquote><p><strong>A senior Bush administration official<\/strong> separately denied that there \twas a deep divide between Rice and Cheney on Iran.<\/p>\n<p>But, the official <strong>said, “the vice president is not necessarily \tresponsible for every single thing that comes out of the mouth of every \tsingle member of his staff.”<\/strong>…<\/p>\n<p>In interviews, people who have spoken with Cheney’s staff have confirmed the \tbroad outlines of the report. Some said that some of the hawkish statements \tto outsiders were made by David Wurmser, a former Pentagon official who is \tnow Cheney’s principal deputy assistant for national security affairs.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>The anonymous “senior Bush administration official” quoted by Cooper certainly seems to have been trying to create some sunlight between Cheney and Wurmser by suggesting that Wurmser doesn’t necessarily speak for the vice president.<\/p>\n<p>Jim Lobe–whose unflinching and relentless reporting on the waxing and waning of neo-conservative influence in Washington is now available in blog form at <a href=\"http:\/\/www.ips.org\/blog\/jimlobe\/\">LobeLog<\/a>–suggests that Wurmser may be on the way out.<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>[I]f Wurmser is forced out in the coming days, it will both further \tisolate and weaken the remaining key neo-cons \u00e2\u20ac\u201c notably, Elliott Abrams at \tthe NSC, and John Hannah, Cheney\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s national security adviser \u00e2\u20ac\u201d and confirm \tthat the vice president himself has been badly wounded. If he isn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t forced \tout, then the persistence of Cheney\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s influence on Bush will be confirmed, \tand the possibility of an attack on Iran will increase. This is a critical \tmoment.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Meyrav Wurmser seemed to talking about her husband, David, when she suggested <a href=\"https:\/\/profcutler.com\/wordpress_blog\/?p=212\">in December 2006<\/a> that, along with John Bolton, “there are others who are about to leave.”<\/p>\n<p>The departure of Wurmser would be very significant.\u00c2\u00a0 <a href=\"http:\/\/www.zmag.org\/content\/showarticle.cfm?ItemID=10185\">I have argued<\/a> that Wurmser’s 1999 book, <em>Tyranny’s Ally<\/em>, provided the blue print not only for toppling Saddam Hussein but for de-Baathification and the empowerment of Iraq Shiites under the leadership of Grand Ayatollah Sistani.<\/p>\n<p>Nevertheless, I think it may be wishful thinking to imagine that Cheney is “badly wounded.”\u00c2\u00a0 Even if Wurmser is ousted, this could mark a <em>reversal of course<\/em> by Cheney rather than a reversal of fortune.<\/p>\n<p>As I argued in <a href=\"https:\/\/profcutler.com\/wordpress_blog\/?p=300\">a previous post<\/a>, Cheney has not always been a reliable ally to Right Zionists like Wurmser.\u00c2\u00a0 And there may be reason to suspect Cheney sometimes thinks of Iran in terms of his <a href=\"https:\/\/profcutler.com\/wordpress_blog\/?p=291\"> “Central Asia” portfolio<\/a> rather than his “Middle East” portfolio.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>In a post last weekIn a post last week, I suggested that David Wurmser was the likely “Cheney aide” rumored by Steven Clemons to be circulating word that Cheney did not support Secretary of State Rice’s diplomatic overtures to Iran. On Friday, Helene Cooper of the New York Times–who wrote an entire article about Wurmser […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[6,3,11],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/profcutler.com\/wordpress_blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/301"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/profcutler.com\/wordpress_blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/profcutler.com\/wordpress_blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/profcutler.com\/wordpress_blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/profcutler.com\/wordpress_blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=301"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/profcutler.com\/wordpress_blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/301\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/profcutler.com\/wordpress_blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=301"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/profcutler.com\/wordpress_blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=301"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/profcutler.com\/wordpress_blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=301"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}