Quite a list here of who he's meeting with and learning from, and those supposedly "sensible Republicans" are far outnumbered by the usual warmongering criminal ones -- but all is not lost: he's actually read 2 whole books by non-warmongers! (but not spoken to them or met with them or asked them for advice)

A World of Issues Waiting, Obama and His Foreign Policy Squad Brush Up --

... Besides reaching out to Mr. Scowcroft, Mr. Obama has also called former Secretary of State George P. Shultz, a Reagan administration official who is known in some foreign policy circles as the father of the Bush doctrine because of his advocacy of preventive war. It is unclear what the two men talked about.

So hat tip to BTD at Talk Left for the link to Matt Yglesias piece regarding the "Bush Doctrine". Unfortunately, for varying reasons, each author's post focuses on the Palin angle (Bashing Palin for Yglesias, combating PDS for BTD).

What is missing is exploring one of the reasons why people who aren't thrilled about Obama (to put it mildly) still could find a reason to vote for him over risking McCain in office: John McCain apparently believes in Bush's idea of prophylactic (he would call "preventive") war.

From Yglesias:

Image by Travis Fox, Washington Post

Beware of Premature Cease-fires

That's the headline from the entire of Sunday's Pundit Pap, phrase courtesy of the American Politics Journal.

What I learned this Sunday: The Middle East is experiencing a new, if painful, birth of freedom; Bush & Co, and all supporters, were wrong in none of what they thought, said, and most of all did; Israel's attack on Lebanon is yet another step in the plan, and, goodie, goodie, another opportunity to show Americans and the world that they were right on Iraq, the War on Terror, and all that both of those neo-con policy icons entail.

Chris Wallace was absent, so Brit Hume filled in as host/questioner. John Bolton was his first guest.

Immediate first impression: Ambassador Bolton is temperamentally unsuited to his position at the UN, and is the perfect voice for the Bush foreign policy.

Well, to be fair, they are all the perfect voices, all the "yes" persons - Condi survives because she is on the team; diplomacy in her hands is a terrifying joke.

I've been one of Pat's fans in the past, mainly for his ability to speak to his own kind like few else. It doesn't get plainer than this:

Time for an “Agonizing Reappraisal”

by Patrick J. Buchanan

Gazing across what Zbigniew Brzezinski once called the “arc of crisis,” U.S. foreign policy appears to be disintegrating.

On the Horn of Africa, Islamic warriors have seized Mogadishu. The warlords, our allies, are on the run. In Islamist Sudan, the Darfur horror rages on. In Egypt, Hosni Mubarak, whom our secretary of state was only recently snubbing for undemocratic behavior, now appears again to be persona grata as our only alternative to the Muslim Brotherhood. Yet the Egyptian president scarcely seems chastened. His judges just confirmed a five-year jail sentence for his democratic opponent Ayman Nur, and his regime just ordered the International Republican Institute of John McCain to cease operations in Egypt.