Honest Brokers: The Politics of Expertise in the “Who Lost China?" Debate

As we evaluate the failures in our invasion of Iraq, much blame has been placed on the advice of a group of men and women labeled neoconservatives. These policy experts have been targeted with misinterpreting information and providing advice that contributed to mistaken, even disastrous, American policy. But more than just being wrong in their expectations, some critics, such as Seymour Hersh, suggest that these policy experts constituted a “cult, " and others allege that they were a group that placed the interests of the Bush administration, the Republican Party, or the state of Israel above that of the United States.