In Tehran by Summer Rudy Giuliani has just announced a new raft of foreign policy advisors. And I guess the premise of the campaign is now that the Bush administration wasn't sufficiently riddled by neoconservative whackjobs.
Topping the list: Michael Rubin as Senior Iran and Turkey Advisor and Middle East Advisory Board Member.
I really don't know how to describe Rubin for those who aren't familiar with him. He worked at Doug Feith's Office of Special Plans. But that hardly does the matter justice -- rather like saying Dick Cheney was a supporter of the Iraq War. On the TPM Scale of Pure Neoconism (TM) Rubin gets well over 99%. Like the most interesting and frightening neos, Michael is that perfect mix of extreme factual knowledge and extreme lack of judgment, prone to wild-eyed theories and fantasies of various sorts but all in the end leading inexorably toward catastrophic policy moves for the United States.
You really might as well put Ahmed Chalabi as your top Mideast or Iran advisor.
--Josh Marshall