Is there an adult in the house????

Via soccerdad at The Left Coaster

Sidney Blumenthal reports that George Bush has purged the last of his father's senior advisers, handing over control to his neocon allies. The last of the adults have left the house.

The transition to President Bush's second term, filled with backstage betrayals, plots and pathologies, would make for an excellent chapter of I, Claudius. To begin with, Bush has unceremoniously and without public acknowledgement dumped Brent Scowcroft, his father's closest associate and friend, as chairman of the foreign intelligence advisory board. The elder Bush's national security adviser was the last remnant of traditional Republican realism permitted to exist within the administration.
At the same time the vice president, Dick Cheney, has imposed his authority over secretary of state designate Condoleezza Rice, in order to blackball Arnold Kanter, former under secretary of state to James Baker and partner in the Scowcroft Group, as a candidate for deputy secretary of state.

The perennial adolescent residing in the White House has not liked listening to adults, including his father and his father's friends.

Bush has long resented his father's alter ego. Scowcroft privately rebuked him for his Iraq follies more than a year ago - an incident that has not previously been reported. Bush "did not receive it well", said a friend of Scowcroft.

As we have seen it's punish the innocent and reward the guilty in this administration. The worst sin is being correct.

Republican elders who warned of endless war are purged. Those who advised Bush that Saddam was building nuclear weapons, that with a light military force the operation would be a "cakewalk", and that capturing Baghdad was "mission accomplished", are rewarded.

The second four years could indeed be worse; the adolescents may have been in charge before but at least there were some adults around. No more, now it's a frat house without a house mother.