Bernie Sanders doesn't have a PNAC bone in his body or PNAC skeleton in his closet.

[Octafish]

Take PNAC, please.

Flashback: What Neocons Told Us about Iraq

Dick Cheney

"I think they're in the last throes, if you will, of the insurgency." June 20, 2005 (Source)
"I think things have gotten so bad inside Iraq, from the standpoint of the Iraqi people, my belief is we will, in fact, be greeted as liberators. . . . I think it will go relatively quickly, . . . (in) weeks rather than months." March 16, 2003 (Source)
“Simply stated, there is no doubt that Saddam Hussein now has weapons of mass destruction. There is no doubt he is amassing them to use against our friends, against our allies, and against us.” (Source)
"If we had to do it over again we would do exactly the same thing.” September 13, 2006 (Source)
“What we did in Iraq was exactly the right thing to do. If I had it to recommend all over again, I would recommend exactly the same course of action.” October 5, 2004 (Source)


Bill Kristol

“Very few wars in American history were prepared better or more thoroughly than this one by this president.” July 15, 2007 (Source)
"This is going to be a two month war, not an eight year war." March 28, 2003 (Source)
"There has been a certain amount of pop sociology... that the Shi'a can't get along with the Sunni... there's almost no evidence of that at all.” April 4, 2003 (Fox News w/ Bill O’Reilly)
"“The first two battles of this new era are now over. The battles of Afghanistan and Iraq have been won decisively and honorably.” April 28, 2003 (Source)
“… there are hopeful signs that Iraqis of differing religious, ethnic, and political persuasions can work together. This is a far cry from the predictions made before the war by many, both here and in Europe, that a liberated Iraq would fracture into feuding clans and unleash a bloodbath.” March 22, 2004 (Source)
“… the continuing debates over the terms of a final constitution, have in fact demonstrated something remarkable in Iraq: a willingness on the part of the diverse ethnic and religious groups to disagree--peacefully--and then to compromise.” March 22, 2004 (Source)


Paul Wolfowitz

“There's a lot of money to pay for this. It doesn't have to be U.S. taxpayer money. We are dealing with a country that can really finance its own reconstruction, and relatively soon.” March 27, 2003 (Source)
On weapons of mass destruction: “There's no question in my mind that there was something there. There are just too many pieces of evidence and we'll get to the bottom of it.” August 1, 2003 (Source)
“Some of the higher-end predictions that we have been hearing recently, such as the notion that it will take several hundred thousand U.S. troops to provide stability in post-Saddam (Hussein) Iraq, are wildly off the mark.” February 27, 2003 (Source)
"It's hard to conceive that it would take more forces to provide stability in post-Saddam Iraq than it would take to conduct the war itself and to secure the surrender of Saddam’s security forces and his army. Hard to imagine." Feb. 27, 2003 (Source)
"Peacekeeping requirements in Iraq might be much lower than historical experience in the Balkans suggests. There's been none of the record in Iraq of ethnic militias fighting one another that produced so much bloodshed and permanent scars in Bosnia along with the requirement for large policing forces to separate those militias.” Feb. 27, 2003 (Source)
“These are Arabs, 23 million of the most educated people in the Arab world, who are going to welcome us as liberators.” Feb. 27, 2003 (Source)
"The Iraqi people understand what this crisis is about. Like the people of France in the 1940s, they view us as their hoped-for liberator.” March 11, 2003 (Source)
"The truth is that for reasons that have a lot to do with the U.S. government bureaucracy, we settled on the one issue that everyone could agree on, which was weapons of mass destruction, as the core reason." May 28, 2003

SOURCE: http://www.sanders.senate.gov/flashback-republicans-iraq-cheney-wolfowitz-kristol

Others, also, have noticed: Bernie Sanders has INTEGRITY.

But Sanders genuinely, sincerely, does not care about optics. He is the rarest of Washington animals, a completely honest person. If he's motivated by anything other than a desire to use his influence to protect people who can't protect themselves, I've never seen it. Bernie Sanders is the kind of person who goes to bed at night thinking about how to increase the heating-oil aid program for the poor. -- Matt Taibbi, Rolling Stone, April 29, 2015

http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/give-em-hell-bernie-20150429?page=2

Please compare with the bi-partisan PNAC crypto-fascist corporate interests bent on fracking Ukraine and making money off war four ways to Super Tuesday:

What about apologizing to Ukraine, Mrs. Nuland?

Fri, Feb 7, 2014
By ORIENTAL REVIEW

What about apologizing to Ukraine, Mrs. Nuland?

Yesterday’s leak of the flagrant telephone talk between the US Assistant Secretary of State Victoria Nuland and the US Ambassador to Ukraine Geoffrey R. Pyatt has already hit the international media headlines. In short, it turned out that the US officials were coordinating their actions on how to install a puppet government in Ukraine. They agreed to nominate Bat’kyvshchina Party leader Arseniy Yatseniuk as Deputy Prime Minister, to bench Udar Party leader Vitaly Klitschko from the game for a while and to discredit neo-Nazi Svoboda party chief Oleh Tiahnybok as “Yanukovych’s project”. Then Mrs. Nuland informed the US Ambassador that the UN Secretary General, Under-Secretary for Political Affairs Jeffrey Feltman had already instructed Ban Ki-moon to send his special envoy to Kyiv this week “to glue things together”. Referring to the European role in managing Ukraine’s political crisis, she was matchlessly elegant: “Fuck the EU”.

In a short while, after nervious attempts to blame Russians in fabricating (!) the tape (State Department: “this is a new low in Russian tradecraft”), Mrs. Nuland made her apologies to the EU officials. Does it mean that the Washington’s repeatedly leaked genuine attitude towards the “strategic Transatlantic partnership” is more worthy of an apology than the direct and clear interference into the internal affairs of a sovereign state and violation of the US-Russia-UK agreement (1994 Budapest memorandum) on security assurances for Ukraine? Meanwhile this document inter alia reads as follows:

The United States of America, the Russian Federation, and the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, reaffirm their commitment to Ukraine, in accordance with the principles of the CSCE Final Act, to respect the Independence and Sovereignty and the existing borders of Ukraine.

The United States of America, the Russian Federation, and the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, reaffirm their obligation to refrain from the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of Ukraine, and that none of their weapons will ever be used against Ukraine except in self-defense or otherwise in accordance with the Charter of the United Nations.

The United States of America, the Russian Federation, and the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, reaffirm their commitment to Ukraine, in accordance with the principles of the CSCE Final Act, to refrain from economic coercion designed to subordinate to their own interest the exercise by Ukraine of the rights inherent in its sovereignty and thus to secure advantages of any kind.

Back to the latest Mrs. Nuland’s diplomatic collapse which was made public, it was unlikely an unfortunate misspelling. Andrey Akulov from Strategic Culture Foundation has published a brilliant report (Bride at every wedding, Part I and Part II) a couple of days ago describing Mrs.Nuland’s blatant lack of professionalism and personal integrity. He described in details her involvement in misinforming the US President and nation on the circumstances of the assasination of the US Ambassador to Libya Chris Stevens in Benghazi in September 2012 and her support of the unlawful US funding of a number of the Russian “independent” NGOs seeking to bring a color revolution to Russia.

CONTINUED w/LINKS...

http://orientalreview.org/2014/02/07/what-about-apologizing-to-ukraine-mrs-nuland/

If you've time, there's great video at the link, too.

Neocons and Liberals Together, Again

The neoconservative Project for the New American Century (PNAC) has signaled its intention to continue shaping the government's national security...

Tom Barry, last updated: February 02, 2005

The neoconservative Project for the New American Century (PNAC) has signaled its intention to continue shaping the government's national security strategy with a new public letter stating that the "U.S. military is too small for the responsibilities we are asking it to assume." Rather than reining in the imperial scope of U.S. national security strategy as set forth by the first Bush administration, PNAC and the letter's signatories call for increasing the size of America's global fighting machine.

SNIP...

Liberal Hawks Fly with the Neocons

The recent PNAC letter to Congress was not the first time that PNAC or its associated front groups, such as the Coalition for the Liberation of Iraq, have included hawkish Democrats.

Two PNAC letters in March 2003 played to those Democrats who believed that the invasion was justified at least as much by humanitarian concerns as it was by the purported presence of weapons of mass destruction. PNAC and the neocon camp had managed to translate their military agenda of preemptive and preventive strikes into national security policy. With the invasion underway, they sought to preempt those hardliners and military officials who opted for a quick exit strategy in Iraq. In their March 19th letter, PNAC stated that Washington should plan to stay in Iraq for the long haul: "Everyone-those who have joined the coalition, those who have stood aside, those who opposed military action, and, most of all, the Iraqi people and their neighbors-must understand that we are committed to the rebuilding of Iraq and will provide the necessary resources and will remain for as long as it takes."

Along with such neocon stalwarts as Robert Kagan, Bruce Jackson, Joshua Muravchik, James Woolsey, and Eliot Cohen, a half-dozen Democrats were among the 23 individuals who signed PNAC's first letter on post-war Iraq. Among the Democrats were Ivo Daalder of the Brookings Institution and a member of Clinton's National Security Council staff; Martin Indyk, Clinton's ambassador to Israel; Will Marshall of the Progressive Policy Institute and Democratic Leadership Council; Dennis Ross, Clinton's top adviser on the Israel-Palestinian negotiations; and James Steinberg, Clinton's deputy national security adviser and head of foreign policy studies at Brookings. A second post-Iraq war letter by PNAC on March 28 called for broader international support for reconstruction, including the involvement of NATO, and brought together the same Democrats with the prominent addition of another Brookings' foreign policy scholar, Michael O'Hanlon.

CONTINUED...

http://rightweb.irc-online.org/articles/display/Neocons_and_Liberals_Together_Again

That's from Rightweb. They're full of facts, for those who take the time to read and learn. One name to pay attention to is Victoria Nuland, our woman in Ukraine, who is married to PNAC co-founder Robert Kagan. Robert Kagan's brother is Frederick Kagan. Frederick Kagan's spouse is Kimberly Kagan.

Brilliant people, big ideas, etc. The thing is, that's a lot of PNAC and the PNAC approach to international relations means more wars without end for profits without cease, among other things detrimental to democracy, peace and justice.

Bernie has none of that.

[peacebird]

1. And that's a great thing! K&R. Important links

[Octafish]

21. How Hillary Clinton's State Department Sold Fracking to the World

A trove of secret documents details the US government's global push for shale gas.

by Mariah Blake
Mother Jones, September/October 2014

EXCERPT...

Clinton urged Bulgarian officials to give fracking another chance. According to Borissov, she agreed to help fly in the "best specialists on these new technologies to present the benefits to the Bulgarian people." But resistance only grew. The following month in neighboring Romania, thousands of people gathered to protest another Chevron fracking project, and Romania's parliament began weighing its own shale gas moratorium. Again Clinton intervened, dispatching her special envoy for energy in Eurasia, Richard Morningstar, to push back against the fracking bans. The State Depart­ment's lobbying effort culminated in late May 2012, when Morningstar held a series of meetings on fracking with top Bulgarian and Romanian officials. He also touted the technology in an interview on Bulgarian national radio, saying it could lead to a fivefold drop in the price of natural gas. A few weeks later, Romania's parliament voted down its proposed fracking ban and Bulgaria's eased its moratorium.

The episode sheds light on a crucial but little-known dimension of Clinton's diplomatic legacy. Under her leadership, the State Department worked closely with energy companies to spread fracking around the globe—part of a broader push to fight climate change, boost global energy supply, and undercut the power of adversaries such as Russia that use their energy resources as a cudgel. But environmental groups fear that exporting fracking, which has been linked to drinking-water contamination and earthquakes at home, could wreak havoc in countries with scant environmental regulation. And according to interviews, diplomatic cables, and other documents obtained by Mother Jones, American officials—some with deep ties to industry—also helped US firms clinch potentially lucrative shale concessions overseas, raising troubling questions about whose interests the program actually serves.

Clinton, who was sworn in as secretary of state in early 2009, believed that shale gas could help rewrite global energy politics. "This is a moment of profound change," she later told a crowd at Georgetown University. "Countries that used to depend on others for their energy are now producers. How will this shape world events? Who will benefit, and who will not?…The answers to these questions are being written right now, and we intend to play a major role." Clinton tapped a lawyer named David Goldwyn as her special envoy for international energy affairs; his charge was "to elevate energy diplomacy as a key function of US foreign policy."

Goldwyn had a long history of promoting drilling overseas—both as a Department of Energy official under Bill Clinton and as a representative of the oil industry. From 2005 to 2009 he directed the US-Libya Business Association, an organization funded primarily by US oil companies—including Chevron, Exxon Mobil, and Marathon—clamoring to tap Libya's abundant supply. Goldwyn lobbied Congress for pro-Libyan policies and even battled legislation that would have allowed families of the Lockerbie bombing victims to sue the Libyan government for its alleged role in the attack.

According to diplomatic cables released by WikiLeaks, one of Goldwyn's first acts at the State Department was gathering oil and gas industry executives "to discuss the potential international impact of shale gas." Clinton then sent a cable to US diplomats, asking them to collect information on the potential for fracking in their host countries. These efforts eventually gave rise to the Global Shale Gas Initiative, which aimed to help other nations develop their shale potential. Clinton promised it would do so "in a way that is as environmentally respectful as possible."

CONTINUED...

http://www.motherjones.com/environment/2014/09/hillary-clinton-fracking-shale-state-department-chevron

Thank you for grokking, peacebird! As Drill-Baby-Drill has just about killed the planet, it's time for some change.

[Zorra]

2. Bernie is the exact opposite of a PNAC neocon. nt

[billhicks76]

7. Hillary In Love With Kissinger

Dick Cheneys choice to head the 911 Investigation. Nuff said.

[Octafish]

22. Social Democracy works

from the book

Sharing the Pie

by Steve Brouwer

For years corporations and the investing class in the United States have been trying to convince the American people that the invisible hand of the global free market requires them to make life leaner and meaner in the workplace. For all the loose talk about the pressures of international competition inevitably forcing wages downward, recent history does not support the theory. Other nations have pursued different outcomes for working people. Germany pays the world's highest wages and still is the world's largest exporter of manufactured goods.

At the end of the 1970s production workers in American manufacturing plants were earning the same amount as their counterparts in Germany. Each country substantially increased its levels of manufacturing productivity in the 1980s, but only the German workers benefited.

The German manufacturing workers kept increasing their advantage into the 1990s, and by 1996 were earning 160 percent of the wages and benefits paid to their American counterparts. The U.S. effort to become a low-wage country had no effect on its dismal record in export production. From 1980 to 1995, the U.S. managed to record sixteen straight manufacturing trade deficits with other countries. At the same time other rich nations, which were maintaining high wages and decent standards of benefits and health care for their citizens, were able to sustain strong export economies. Germany, for instance, generated sixteen straight trade surpluses from 1980 through 1996; Japan also racked up sixteen out of sixteen; the Netherlands and Sweden did not do badly, either, with fourteen and thirteen surpluses, respectively, in the same time span.

Perhaps the United States has been playing the wrong game. Elsewhere in the advanced industrialized world, working people retain some power in relation to the owners of capital. This is made manifest in the strength of organized labor.

SNIP...

The greatest danger to working people in Europe is posed by their own financiers and capitalists, who are tempted to disinvest in their own economies because they smell higher returns on their money elsewhere. An instructive lesson was provided by Sweden in the l990s. After 1989, when Swedish financiers pushed the government to lift foreign exchange controls, there was a tremendous flight of capital as major Swedish transnational companies and banks rapidly pursued production opportunities in other countries. The old cooperative relationship with labor was, in the words of Stuart Wilks, "rejected by a domestic industrial sector which needed to develop more flexible production and investment strategies in a globalized economic system.'' The social democratic government was pushed out of power in 1991 because unemployment jumped to 3.5 percent, but the new conservative government was worse; its failure to control currency and speculation led to a "fiasco," according to economist Helen Lachs Ginsburg, which "converted a recession into a depression marked by three years of declining output, the loss of one-tenth of Sweden's jobs, and record unemployment" of over 10 percent. Social Democrats came back into their customary position in power in 1994, but in a much weaker position.

CONTINUED w/links, charts, etc...

http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/Economics/SocialDemocracy.html

Bernie really is the opposite of PNAC neocons, Zorra. What's more, he thinks all human beings are precious.

[FlatBaroque]

3. AutoOctaRec

[annabanana]

8. ^^^ I like this^^

(and may steal it)

[FlatBaroque]

14. it is yours

Ms. Banana

[calimary]

11. Welcome to DU, FlatBaroque!

Glad you're here, you eloquently clever thing you! I'm wishing I could recommend this OP a MILLION times. A BRAZILLION times. It is Required Reading. Know the enemy.

[FlatBaroque]

15. thank you

Ms. Calimary

[Octafish]

23. Hiya, FlatBaroque! You like Bernie, too?

The guy doesn't just say he's with the People, he actually does stuff that helps the People. Take the Banksters:

ED SCHULTZ: When`s the Senate going to wake up? You`re there. Where`s
the other 99?

BERNIE SANDERS: Let me just say again what many people will not be happy to
hear. Wall Street is extraordinarily powerful. Congress doesn`t regulate
them. The big banks regulate what Congress does.

SCHULTZ: Is it a political winner for the president to just hammer
this on the campaign trail?

SANDERS: Ed, in my humble opinion, if when the president first took
office -- and I`ve got to tell you, Byron Dorgan and I and others went to
the White House, a half a dozen of us, we went and said, this is three
years ago, "Mr. President, you`ve got to stand up to Wall Street."
You tell me, Ed, how many of these guys have gone to jail?

SOURCE: http://www.dailykos.com/story/2012/05/18/1092100/-Bernie-Sanders-Congress-doesn-t-regulate-banks-banks-regulate-congress-Must-see

PS: A most hearty welcome to DU, FlatBaroque! Really dig your classic handle. Truly appreciate your kind appellation!

[FlatBaroque]

24. I like Bernie.

Though the Obama experience cleansed me of the idea of being passionate about a politician. Guess they call that being jaded. Thanks for the welcome.

[Octafish]

25. I'm so old, I remember the Carter let-down.

And I remember the Clinton let-down.

So Obama was a deja vu all over again.

In Search of Jimmy Carter: The Missing Link to the Democratic Party’s Pivot to Wall Street by Chris MacAvel is a good summation.

EXCERPT...

In fact, rather than progress the quintessential feature of the Carter regime are the limits to progress — the need of the American people to sacrifice and limit the scope of their vision for the future — the need to adopt a mentality of scarcity. In Civic Religion and the Presidency, Pierre and Linder conclude that he “told the American people what they did not want to hear — that they would have to renounce their profligate lifestyles.” (Kaufman 1) Tellingly, in Carter’s 1977 inaugural address he asserts that “we have learned that ‘more’ is not necessarily better, that even our great nation has its recognized limits.” Carter’s ideological outlook could not be spelled out more explicitly.

What a shock to discover fellow Democrats could behave so, ah, fiscally conservatively as to benefit the ownership class.

PS: Sorry the welcome was so delayed. I had to reprimer the creep.

[summerschild]

4. How did Victoria Nuland 'Kagan' get that position in the State Department?

I've looked and looked and can't find if she was a holdover from Bush or if Hillary brought her in.

I didn't vote for Hillary twice before because I believed she was too hawkish.

Her snuggling up to PNAC supporters doesn't make me feel any better about her now - in fact - WORSE!

I know how important it is to keep a democrat in the White House, but I don't think a person with the right moral fiber can support PNAC ideals. Hillary is scaring me.

[sabrina 1]

12. That's a good question, the woman is so right wing it amazes me that she represents a

Democratic administration. Don't know if she is a left over Bush loyalist or not.

[FlatBaroque]

16. promoted by clinton

Then also by kerry to her current perch

[karynnj]

13. She's career foreign service - working in one role or another in the State Department for decades

http://www.state.gov/r/pa/ei/biog/214343.htm (This does not say the date she started, but she was there before 1993 as they speak of earlier work with no dates given. )

[nationalize the fed]

5. + the 4 trillion blown on invading and bombing foreign countries

STOP THE WARS AND DO IT NOW

http://costofwar.com

^There's the money stolen from the American People that could have re-built our infrastructure, built desalination plants for drought stricken regions etc etc etc...

Not one member of the 99% will ever benefit from these trillions wasted.

Go Bernie. Let the Debates Begin.



Volunteer to help Bernie:
https://berniesanders.com/volunteer/

[Cheese Sandwich]

20. "Go Bernie. Let the Debates Begin. "

+1000

[silvershadow]

6. Thank you. nt

[Initech]

9. Bernie for president!!!!!

[calimary]

10. Please also notice that the first guy on the left, paul wolfowitz, is one of jebbie's hand-picked

foreign policy advisors. Now. In the present day. Before the campaign officially starts, even. He's already in place. And he's rarin' to go because he finds nothing wrong with what they did during bush/cheney - except that they weren't able to "finish" - i.e.: continue the job. They want back in, BIGTIME.

Do NOT say you weren't warned.

[FlatBaroque]

17. yep

They need to finish Iran, then Russia.

[Aerows]

19. Part of the war cries is that

oil price has sunk, and they can't gamble with futures on oil like they have been doing - what they want to do is create a disruption to imply a shortage.

[Aerows]

18. I like him for the brave stances he takes on issues

I'll vote him because, as history of his voting practices suggests, he keeps his promises.

[amborin]

26. Somehow missed this, Octafish. Great post! K&R

[Octafish]

27. Thanks! You gave me an idea...

http://www.democraticunderground.com/12512007264