but many believe that Benjamin Netanyahu is little more than an Israeli George Bush, crying for war on false pretenses with little regard for the innocents he destroys in the process.

And that includes Meir Dagan, the former head of the Mossad, among others. He has sharply criticized Netanyahu's posturing as dangerous and counterproductive.

One really needs to understand what massive damage the neocons did to America. Even though the Iraq war mostly knocked them out of power, we're going to be paying for their "fuck reality" view of the world for a long time to come.

Back in the 90s, a group of hardcodre neocons that included Paul Wolfowitz, John Bolton, and Donald Rumsfeld cooked up the idea of invading Iraq as a way of earning what they saw as cheap and easy political capital. They were kinda pissed that Bush the Elder hadn't gone all the way and crushed Saddam when he had the chance, and they saw this as a way of reminding the world what huge dicks American conservatives have.

Remember all those asinine claims Bush tossed out about the war? "We will be greeted as liberators." "The war will be over in a month, tops." "Oil revenues will pay for most of it?" Yeah, these guys actually believed all that bullshit.

Mind you, not a single one of them had the slightest bit of expertise on the subject, not a bit. And when they DID consult an actual expert, Gen. Tony Zinni, the main military guy in charge of keeping Saddam contained (and an actual expert on the issues and conflicts of the area), he told them they were batshit insane, and it would turn into a bloodbath and quagmire. They told him to go fuck himself. After this crowd made it into power, Zinni resigned from the military.

So long story short (-ish) we invaded Iraq, an event that will eventually go down in history as one of the WORST blunders in US history. The entire Iraq fiasco was a showcase of neocon ideals and programs, and they all went up in flames, usually disastrously. The good news is that the neocon hold on power went up in flames with it. The bad news is, they dragged the country down with them. And left the Republican party in the grip of the tea party, a group even MORE opposed to reality than the neocons.

So when a tough-talking world leader stands up in front of Congress and starts banging a drum for war and telling us that some country is going to kill us all, while conservatives heap standing ovations on him...yeah, it's time to be just a weensy bit nervous.