March 8, 2008 5:14AM # Chastened Much? By [Justin Logan](https://www.cato.org/people/justin-logan) --- SHARE Philip Weiss attends an event sponsored by the Middle East Forum in New York with former Cheney aide David Wurmser and [reports back](http://www.philipweiss.org/mondoweiss/2008/03/when-i-signed-u.html). Here’s a snip from the Q and A: > What are the 3 things he would tell John McCain if he were his adviser? > > > “Let me just bluntly answer that. One, abandon the two-state solution statement that we have right now vis a vis the Palestinians. Two—Well, let me start with number one. Number one is an open, publicly expressed regime-change strategy in Iran. Two, an open expressed regime-change strategy in Syria. 3, abandoning the two-state solution policy we’ve had frankly since the 9/11 attacks…” One honestly has to wonder, what would it take these folks to learn from the disaster that their bizarre theories begot in Iraq? Meanwhile, today’s *Washington Post* lets us know (via [Eric Martin](http://americanfootprints.com/drupal/node/3935)) that we should keep an eye out for a new NIE on Iraq — except, despite its no doubt being chock-full of great news about how terrific things are over there, the administration apparently [doesn’t want to release a version publicly](http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/03/06/AR2008030603900.html). As terrifying as each of the presidential candidates is in various ways, it’s going to be a relief when this long national nightmare is over. We deserve, at the very least, a new nightmare. ##### Related Tags [Defense and Foreign Policy](https://www.cato.org/defense-foreign-policy) [![Creative Commons License](/build/cato_2020/images/creative-commons.svg)](http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/) This work is licensed under a [Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/).