The Weekly Standard called Brzezinski "demented"

In a June 14 Weekly Standard commentary titled "Profiles in Chutzpah" (and reprinted in the June 10 edition of the New York Post under the headline "Diplomatic Dementia"), The Weekly Standard's editors asserted that Zbigniew Brzezinski, former national security adviser to President Jimmy Carter, has "succumbed to algoreitis simplex" -- a reference to the "diagnosis" of former Vice President Al Gore as "insane" by numerous conservative pundits following a May 26 speech condemning the Bush administration's conduct of the war on Iraq. The Weekly Standard also said that Brzezinski "is demented."

From the June 14 issue of The Weekly Standard's "SCRAPBOOK" section:

Add Zbigniew Brzezinski to the list of politically prominent people who've lately succumbed to algoreitis simplex, the mysterious brain infection so named for its most obvious manifestation: the eagerness of its victims to indulge in ludicrously exaggerated condemnations of George W. Bush's war on terrorism...

Under Bush, Brzezinski writes, "America's credibility has been tarnished among its traditional friends, its prestige has plummeted worldwide, and global hostility to the United States has reached a historical high." So far as Dr. SCRAPBOOK is concerned, that one sentence alone ought to seal the diagnosis: The man is demented; he can't remember his own career.

—G.W.