Endurance

Iran-Contra icons Richard Armitage and Wayne Downing don't figure in the public imagination, but their careers exemplify the lethal undergirding of US foreign policy institutionalized in 1948 by President Truman. All the coups, assassinations and other nefarious acts targeted at preventing democracy worldwide, enabled by National Security secret agents and budgets, continue unabated. While they normally fly under the radar of most journalists, during the Bush Administration some of them became very outspoken; the hubris of this milieu was momentarily exposed by Armitage in a couple of interviews he did, in which he seemed gleefully intoxicated with his new found notoriety. I'm sure Wilkerson and Powell were horrified.