Thirdparty knocks it out of the park!

Oh man, this is a good post. PLEASE, go to LamontBLOG and show him some love by leaving a comment.

Sens. Lieberman and Kyl (R-AZ), honorary co-chairs of the resurrected Committee on the Present Danger, will reportedly be honored with the group's first annual "statesman award" tonight:

"The Statesman Award will be given each year to a person or persons who have exemplified statesmanship and thoughtful leadership in support of the nation's security. Senators Lieberman and Kyl certainly fit that description," said R. James Woolsey, co-Chairman of the Committee.

Who is this group? An Alternet article from 2004 sheds some light:

Chaired by former CIA director James Woolsey, the reborn Committee has 49 members in all, including many well known hawks and neoconservatives affiliated with the American Enterprise Institute (Jeanne Kirkpatrick, Danielle Pletka, Joshua Muravchik, Laurie Mylroie, Newt Gingrich, Michael Rubin), former Attorney General Edwin Meese, Victor Davis Hanson of Stanford's Hoover Institution, Norm Podhoretz of Commentary fame, Charles Kupperman of Boeing Missile Defense Systems, former Reagan official Jack Kemp, former Congressional staffer-turned-lobbyist and Project for the New American Century board member Randy Scheunemann; and several anti-arms control hawks – Henry Cooper, Jim Woolsey himself, Kenneth Adelman, Max Kampelman [founder of the Committee's 1976 iteration] – reminiscent of the Committee's earlier two incarnations.

And what is their purpose?

So, what then, are the Committee's real goals? They seem to be twofold: First, to broaden the "war on terror" in the American public mind beyond al-Qaeda, targeting a vast network of interlinked "Islamist-jihadist" terror groups worldwide, including Hezbollah, Hamas, Islamic Jihad, and their state sponsors, and to think about this war on terror not just from the standpoint of the US as the potential victim, but of key US allies as being potential victims.

The second goal appears to be to lobby influential American policymakers to support a US defense posture and weapons programs that Committee members believe would benefit the security of both the US and key allies, such as Israel.

Not all conservatives are ready to embrace this essentially neoconservative, if bipartisan Committee.

Not all conservatives were ready, but Joe Lieberman certainly was when he co-wrote (with Sen. Kyl) a Washington Post op-ed introducing the group in July 2004.

Anyway, good for Joe. He could use a break, some time among his real friends.

Ouch.