That was a pretty good “Frontline” last night. They are two steps back from where I think they should have gone with it, but I also understand their caution.

One thing that really struck me was that in comparision to the early Cheney, Wolfowitz and Rumsfeld, Kissinger was considered a moderate! My god. I still think one of the major reasons Bush didn’t want to join the International Tribunal was so that Kissinger couldn’t be charged with war crimes – and of course, anyone else after that, like Bush himself.

I also got a different sense of Colin Powell than I had before. He is clearly the best of the bunch. I will say that Rumsfeld does have a kind of personal charm that I find appealing at times – I liked those early pics of him with a pipe, and he is a handsome man. Cheney and Wolfowitz, on the other hand, are more clearly apparent as what they are in their early photos. Just in time for Halloween. Shudders.

But it is frightening to me how far back these things go – back to Nixon, back to Ford. Oh, on Nixon, a very very strange thing from the Nixon tapes has him saying that Rumsfeld is “not long for this world” and that they were going to “dump him” when this is over. It sounded ominous – Nixon talked just like a gangster half the time – who woulda thunk it from a Quaker?

The Wolfowitz plan, which is now the Bush plan, of preemption was considered too hawkish and radical for even the republicans of those days. How the worm has turned.