Amen Rob.
And though you wisely avoid going further to touch the third rail, it seems I have a death-wish.
PNAC was/is explicit - that their actions were intended first and foremost to advance the interests of Israel by breaking up the middle east into small warring statelets that could never pose a future threat or challenge to Israel.
PNAC and the neocons have been media-savvy and have dropped out of the public conversation, despite the fact they still hold extensive power in Washington.
Robert Kagan (an original PNAC founder), his wife Victoria Nuland, and a slew of others still call many of the shots in Washington.
I'm amazed Russell has conspicuously avoided joining these dots in his more recent columns. Victoria Nuland had a conspicuous role in the Ukraine coup - it was clearly a neocon project in it's own right, and yet the PA conversation around Ukraine was slewed towards discussion of "democratic protest".
Overthrow of Assad and breakup of Syria is literally part of the publically released PNAC documents from the 2002 era and clearly part of the same project and intent, yet Russell's more recent columns and the PA conversation in general has omitted this almost completely.
It's looked to me as though the PA discussion has been hijacked over time by responding and commenting on the mainstream narrative - talking about talking for the sake of the conversation rather than setting the conversation. Maybe I've just misunderstood what the purpose of the blog was.

Indeed. Mr "all radar, no compass" was always going to struggle when dislodged from the high ground..