New to DU? Here's your =======> Intro to PNAC

[TeeYiYi]

Originally compiled and posted by Stephanie (Thanks Stephanie!)
Mon Sep-08-03 07:23 PM http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=104&topic_id=301411


http://www.guardian.co.uk/september11/story/0,11209,1036685,00.html

This war on terrorism is bogus
The 9/11 attacks gave the US an ideal pretext to use force to secure its global domination

Michael Meacher
Saturday September 6, 2003
The Guardian

Massive attention has now been given - and rightly so - to the reasons why Britain went to war against Iraq. But far too little attention has focused on why the US went to war, and that throws light on British motives too. The conventional explanation is that after the Twin Towers were hit, retaliation against al-Qaida bases in Afghanistan was a natural first step in launching a global war against terrorism. Then, because Saddam Hussein was alleged by the US and UK governments to retain weapons of mass destruction, the war could be extended to Iraq as well. However this theory does not fit all the facts. The truth may be a great deal murkier.

We now know that a blueprint for the creation of a global Pax Americana was drawn up for Dick Cheney (now vice-president), Donald Rumsfeld (defence secretary), Paul Wolfowitz (Rumsfeld's deputy), Jeb Bush (George Bush's younger brother) and Lewis Libby (Cheney's chief of staff). The document, entitled Rebuilding America's Defences, was written in September 2000 by the neoconservative think tank, Project for the New American Century (PNAC).

The plan shows Bush's cabinet intended to take military control of the Gulf region whether or not Saddam Hussein was in power. It says "while the unresolved conflict with Iraq provides the immediate justification, the need for a substantial American force presence in the Gulf transcends the issue of the regime of Saddam Hussein."

The PNAC blueprint supports an earlier document attributed to Wolfowitz and Libby which said the US must "discourage advanced industrial nations from challenging our leadership or even aspiring to a larger regional or global role". It refers to key allies such as the UK as "the most effective and efficient means of exercising American global leadership". It describes peacekeeping missions as "demanding American political leadership rather than that of the UN". It says "even should Saddam pass from the scene", US bases in Saudi Arabia and Kuwait will remain permanently... as "Iran may well prove as large a threat to US interests as Iraq has". It spotlights China for "regime change", saying "it is time to increase the presence of American forces in SE Asia".<much more>


http://www.newamericancentury.org/publicationsreports.htm

"Rebuilding America's Defenses: Strategy, Forces and Resources For a New Century," September 2000. A Report of the Project for the New American Century.

<snip>The United States cannot simply declare a strategic pause while experimenting with new technologies and operational concepts. Nor can it choose to pursue a transformation strategy that would decouple American and allied interests. A transformation strategy that solely pursued capabilities for projecting force from the United States, for example, and sacrificed forward basing and presence, would be at odds with larger American policy goals and would trouble American allies.

Further, the process of transformation, even if it brings revolutionary change, is likely to be a long one, absent some catastrophic and catalyzing event - like a new Pearl Harbor. Domestic politics and industrial policy will shape the pace and content of transformation as much as the requirements of current missions. A decision to suspend or terminate aircraft carrier production, as recommended by this report and as justified by the clear direction of military technology, will cause great upheaval. Likewise, systems entering production today - the F-22 fighter, for example - will be in service inventories for decades to come. Wise management of this process will consist in large measure of figuring out the right moments to halt production of current-paradigm weapons and shift to radically new designs. The expense associated with some programs can make them roadblocks to the larger process of transformation - the Joint Strike Fighter program, at a total of approximately $200 billion, seems an unwise investment. Thus, this report advocates a two-stage process of change - transition and transformation - over the coming decades.</snip>


http://truthout.org/docs_02/022203A.htm

Of Gods and Mortals and Empire
By William Rivers Pitt
t r u t h o u t | Perspective

Friday 21 February 2003

<snip>Vice President Dick Cheney is a founding member of PNAC, along with Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and Defense Policy Board chairman Richard Perle. Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz is the ideological father of the group. Bruce Jackson, a PNAC director, served as a Pentagon official for Ronald Reagan before leaving government service to take a leading position with the weapons manufacturer Lockheed Martin.

PNAC is staffed by men who previously served with groups like Friends of the Democratic Center in Central America, which supported America's bloody gamesmanship in Nicaragua and El Salvador, and with groups like The Committee for the Present Danger, which spent years advocating that a nuclear war with the Soviet Union was "winnable."

PNAC has recently given birth to a new group, The Committee for the Liberation of Iraq, which met with National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice in order to formulate a plan to "educate" the American populace about the need for war in Iraq. CLI has funneled millions of taxpayer dollars to support the Iraqi National Congress and the Iraqi heir presumptive, Ahmed Chalabi. Chalabi was sentenced in absentia by a Jordanian court in 1992 to 22 years in prison for bank fraud after the collapse of Petra Bank, which he founded in 1977. Chalabi has not set foot in Iraq since 1956, but his Enron-like business credentials apparently make him a good match for the Bush administration's plans.

PNAC's "Rebuilding America's Defenses" report is the institutionalization of plans and ideologies that have been formulated for decades by the men currently running American government. The PNAC Statement of Principles is signed by Cheney, Wolfowitz and Rumsfeld, as well as by Eliot Abrams, Jeb Bush, Bush's special envoy to Afghanistan Zalmay Khalilzad, and many others. William Kristol, famed conservative writer for the Weekly Standard, is also a co-founder of the group. The Weekly Standard is owned by Ruppert Murdoch, who also owns international media giant Fox News. </snip>


http://www.guardian.co.uk/international/story/0,3604,999669,00.html

The spies who pushed for war
Julian Borger reports on the shadow rightwing intelligence network set up in Washington to second-guess the CIA and deliver a justification for toppling Saddam Hussein by force
Thursday July 17, 2003
The Guardian

<snip>In the days after September 11, Mr Rumsfeld and his deputy, Paul Wolfowitz, mounted an attempt to include Iraq in the war against terror. When the established agencies came up with nothing concrete to link Iraq and al-Qaida, the OSP was given the task of looking more carefully.

William Luti, a former navy officer and ex-aide to Mr Cheney, runs the day-to-day operations, answering to Douglas Feith, a defence undersecretary and a former Reagan official.

The OSP had access to a huge amount of raw intelligence. It came in part from "report officers" in the CIA's directorate of operations whose job is to sift through reports from agents around the world, filtering out the unsubstantiated and the incredible. Under pressure from the hawks such as Mr Cheney and Mr Gingrich, those officers became reluctant to discard anything, no matter how far-fetched. The OSP also sucked in countless tips from the Iraqi National Congress and other opposition groups, which were viewed with far more scepticism by the CIA and the state department.

There was a mountain of documentation to look through and not much time. The administration wanted to use the momentum gained in Afghanistan to deal with Iraq once and for all. The OSP itself had less than 10 full-time staff, so to help deal with the load, the office hired scores of temporary "consultants". They included lawyers, congressional staffers, and policy wonks from the numerous rightwing thinktanks in Washington. Few had experience in intelligence.

"Most of the people they had in that office were off the books, on personal services contracts. At one time, there were over 100 of them," said an intelligence source. The contracts allow a department to hire individuals, without specifying a job description. <more>


For further reference, see the PNAC Links Archive--->>
--->> http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=110&topic_id=80&mesg_id=80&page=

TYY
 

[Wetzelbill]

1. Here is my PNAC column

I wrote an expanded version for the latest issue of Red Ink Magazine.

Fabrication will result in more pre-emptive warfare

By Bill Wetzel
Arizona Daily Wildcat
Monday May 5, 2003

“When Alexander saw the breadth of his domain, he wept for there were no more worlds to conquer.” —Milton

The drama of George W. Bush, in military uniform, championing peace and freedom on the USS Abraham Lincoln was beautiful. I had to wipe a tear out of my eye.

From laughing so hard.

I know a Karl Rove special when I see one.

Meanwhile, our boys from the “Project For The New American Century” (PNAC) have staged the first war in transforming America into a planetary empire by way of military force. Who’s next? Not Syria. That’s postulation

http://wildcat.arizona.edu/papers/96/147/03_2.html

[Trajan]

2. Let's add ... The BushCo Conflict of Interest Encyclopedia

Truth Is All's tome : The BushCo Conflict of Interest Encyclopedia: A Beginners Guide

at :
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=104&topic_id=828541

ENRON

Conflict of Interest Questions Raised in GAO Enron Lawsuit
... to file suit against the Bush administration to find out whether Enron Corporation influenced ... facing questions about its own potential conflict of interest ...
www.newsmax.com/archives/articles/2002/2/1/52721.shtml - 35k -

Public Citizen | Press Room - Citing Extensive Conflicts of ...
... avoid even the appearance of conflict of interest ... involvement in any investigation or litigation involving Enron. ... Among the reasons Bush should recuse himself : ...
www.citizen.org/pressroom/release.cfm?ID=1019 - 14k - Dec 4, 2003 -

Enron Scandal Points to Bush -The Enron scandal, which has laid ...
The Enron scandal, which has laid waste to thousands ... revealed questionable ties to the Bush White House ... members of Congress, spotlights a conflict of interest ...
www.context.co.nz:8080/stories/storyReader$1470 - 20k - Cached -

AlterNet: Bush's Enron Ties
... more evidence of a White House conflict of interest ... themselves at the same time that Enron was lavishing large campaign contributions on President Bush and the ...
www.alternet.org/story.html?StoryID=12155 - 21k - Dec 4, 2003 -

-snip-

[Virgil]

3. A great post in search of truth

There are a lot of new people to the board and PNAC is at the very heart of the problem. It will also show people that the Fantasyland Five media conglomerates are in bed with the plutocracy that now rule the people. I have bookmarked your thread so that I can do with a paste what you have already done with your thread.

The media is complicit in the war. People would have been outraged had they know of PNAC. They should now come to understand PNAC and I do not think that outrage can be prevented.

What is sad is that the Democrats did not junmp on them during all of the filibusters as call it core knowledge for understandin what was going on.

[info being]

4. We need to get this message out...

I was on the MTV "Fight for your Rights" board yesterday reposting some of these pieces...posting links, etc., and a number of young people there were paying attention. We all need to make an effort to go elsewhere and debate. After some time here, I think we're well-prepared and it isn't that scary at all.

[Wetzelbill]

5. nice job

[leftchick]

6. kick....

for the newbies.... :kick:

[TeeYiYi]

7. Bookmark and kick . . .

TYY :kick:

[JackRiddler]

8. another primer...

A PRIMER ON PNAC AND THE BUSH REGIME
(by Jack Riddler)

All antiwar activists need to know about PNAC - the Project for a New American Century.

The PNAC site: www.newamericancentury.org

Founded in the late 1990s, PNAC is an initiative of neoconservative think-tank academics and politicians. Its participants and endorsers include the men who planned and launched the invasion of Iraq - Rumsfeld, Cheney, Paul Wolfowitz, Richard Perle - and many other current high officials in the Bush regime, such as Iran-Contra retreads Elliot Abrams and Richard Armitage (both at the State Department), current Aghanistan envoy Zalmay Khalilzad, and Cheney's chief of staff, Lewis Libby.

PNAC formulated the foreign policy consensus of the later Bush regime (notwithstanding Colin Powell) and the basis for the Bush Doctrine of preventive war. PNAC manifests the intent to invade Iraq long in advance of Sept. 11, and proves that many of the reasons given for the invasion were dishonest. The PNAC documents are the Pentagon Papers of our time.

The PNAC mission statement of 1997 was endorsed by the governor of Florida and later manager of the 2000 coup d'etat, Jeb Bush. Several members of Perle's Defense Policy Board - the chickenhawk civilians at the Pentagon who directly advise Wolfowitz and Rumsfeld - also signed the mission statement, including Frank Gaffney and former VP Dan Quayle.
http://www.newamericancentury.org/statementofprinciples.htm

In addition, PNAC brought together the most committed group of right-wing pundits ever to fume and fulminate, including co-founder Robert Kagan, Paula Dobriansky, Midge Decter, Francis Fukuyama, Norman Podhoretz, William Kristol of the Weekly Standard...

PNAC began lobbying President Clinton to invade Iraq and effect immediate "regime change" six years ago, in 1997. In February 1998, Rumsfeld, Perle, Armitage and a further long list of influential neoconservatives and future and former regime members (among them former Secretaries of Defense Frank Carlucci and Casper Weinberger and former National Security Adviser Robert McFarlane) wrote Clinton to urge an immediate attack on Saddam. They called on the U.S. to "launch a systematic air campaign against the pillars of power" and "position U.S. ground force equipment in the region... as a last resort." They expressed confidence that "Kuwait, Turkey and Saudi Arabia... will give us the political and logistical support to succeed."

The signatories read like a union of the old Iran-Contra cabal under Reagan and Bush Sr. with some of the most committed American supporters of the Israeli Likud's hardline policies:
See http://www.cooperativeresearch.org/archive/1990s/openletter021998.htm

PNAC is a vision for aggressive U.S. military domination of the world, beginning with regime change, the occupation of Iraq, and a new order for the entire Middle East, where America's only true friend is thought to be Israel. PNAC looks to future conflicts with Syria, Iran and other rogue states. The underlying theory holds that the regimes in these countries will collapse at the "first whiff of gunpowder" (Perle on Iraq), that their peoples will all greet American invasions with open arms, and that the societies can be turned into liberal democracies overnight.

All that this great transformation requires is overwhelming American force and the will to use it. One word for this idea is hubris. It is hard to tell whether the PNACers themselves really believe it.

Possibly the best analysis of the Bush regime's PNAC agenda for the world appeared in an Indian journal of economics:
http://www.rupe-india.org/34/contents.html
Specifically this chapter:
http://www.rupe-india.org/34/agenda.html

PNAC was recently covered on Nightline:
http://abcnews.go.com/sections/nightline/DailyNews/pnac_030310.html

Its intellecutal originators and their fellow travelers are analyzed in the New York Times:
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/04/05/arts/05WARB.html?ex=1050563461&ei=1&en=539a0a8fbd1a2aac

Scholars from the American Enterprise Institute have played a key role:
http://www.aei.org/publications/pubID.16710,filter./pub_detail.asp

In an excellent Oct. 2002 article in Harper's ("Dick Cheney's Song of America: Drafting a plan for global dominance"), David Armstrong traces these Strangelovian visions of total dominance back to the early 1990s and the U.S. defense plans drafted at the time by Cheney and Wolfowitz, when they were last in charge of the Pentagon: http://www.its.caltech.edu/~johnsonm/harpers/harpers_0210_criticism.pdf

The idea of occupying the Persian Gulf dates all the way back to plans devised under the aegis of Henry Kissinger and the Ford Administration, who saw this as a practicable solution to U.S. dependence on Middle Eastern oil. See "The Thirty Year Itch" by Robert Dreyfuss, last month in Mother Jones magazine:
http://www.motherjones.com/news/feature/2003/10/ma_273_01.html

The October 2002 Idaho Observer published a good summary of PNAC by Neil Mackay of the Sunday Herald in Scotland, "Bush administration plotted 'War on Terrorism' before 2000 election":
http://proliberty.com/observer/20021015.htm

Project for a Chinese Century?

PNAC makes no bones about the aim of establishing a large and permanent U.S. military presence in the Middle East, regardless of whether Saddam is gone.

PNAC stands for unilateral American leadership of "coalitions of the willing," and shows open contempt for treaties, diplomacy and the troublesome United Nations, which PNAC hopes to make irrelevant. Ideas of international or multilateral partnership are simply naive in an essentially Hobbesian world. The United States alone has the moral authority to dictate the terms of international order, in every region of the world.

PNAC advocates massive increases in U.S. military power and the defense budget, "forward basing" in countries around the world, "full spectrum dominance" of the U.S. military against all comers in space, land, sea, air and cyberspace, and "preventive war" against designated enemy regimes.

PNAC aims to block the rise of any local hegemon that could challenge U.S. power in any "strategic region," and to assure that there will never again be a global challenger like Russia, Europe or China.

Of course, PNAC's reckless strategy is practically designed to plunge the world into a new century of arms races and wars, endangering the safety and true interests of the American people. With its open contempt for the rest of the world, the dream of PNAC is guaranteed to ultimately fail, and in the process to bog down and ultimately destroy American power.

Making the Enemy
(More to come on Rumsfeld, West and Russia arming both sides during the Iran-Iraq conflict, how the Bush-Reagan regimes literally saved Saddam twice in 86-87 and in 1991, and the one day in history when Wolfowitz was actually right: March 1, 1991.)

Business as Usual

Is it a coincidence that almost all of the PNAC boys in the administration previously worked as consultants or executives in the war and/or oil industries?

Even today, Cheney cashes in more than a million dollars a year from his former company, Halliburton. In the 1990s under Cheney as CEO, Halliburton rebuilt the Iraqi oil field infrastructure - the destruction of which Cheney had overseen as Secretary of Defense during the 1991 Gulf war. Cheney has now switched back to the task of destroying Iraq all over again, and Halliburton has lined up at the trough for the post-war rebuilding contracts. No doubt a top seat at Halliburton is waiting for Cheney after he leaves office.

Richard Perle, head of the hardline Defense Policy Board at the Pentagon, counts only as a "consultant" to the government, and simultaneously offers his services (influence peddling) to private Pentagon contractors, like Trireme Investments. In the 1990s he served as a consultant to then-Israeli premier Benjamin Netanyahu, advising him on how to undermine the peace process with the Palestinians.

Perle's dealings were exposed recently by Seymour Hersh in The New Yorker:
"LUNCH WITH THE CHAIRMAN. Why was Richard Perle meeting with Adnan Khashoggi?"
http://www.newyorker.com/fact/content/?030317fa_fact

Following Hersh's blockbuster report, Perle tendered a resignation as head of the Defense Policy Board, but he still meets with the other DPB members at the Pentagon. His "resignation" is a transparent ruse, and Perle remains a constant presence in the media, pushing the chickenhawk line. In a CNN interview, he called Hersh a "terrorist":
http://www.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0303/09/le.00.html

Carlyle Group

Among the signatories to PNAC's open letter to Clinton was former Secretary of Defense Frank Carlucci. Since 1989 he has directed the Carlyle Group, currently the 12th largest Pentagon contractor. Carlucci's college roommate at Yale was the current head of the Pentagon, Donald Rumsfeld. A Carlyle Group subsidiary devised and sold to the Pentagon the original plan for "Shock and Awe" - the operation that last month rained hundreds of missiles on downtown Bagdad in a failed effort to topple the regime overnight.

An investment fund, Carlyle specializes in buying "undervalued" arms makers, magically turning them into arms-contract winners on the strength of its highly paid lobbyists, lawyers and directors. Among them are George H.W. Bush himself, former UK prime minister John Major and the former Secretary of State under Bush, James Baker, as well as other former heads of state and ministers. Carlyle helped finance companies belonging to George W. Bush, including the airline food supplier Caterair. Until the aftermath of the Sept. 11th attacks, the fund's veteran investors numbered members of the Saudi Binladin family - including two brothers of Osama, the world's most famous lapsed CIA asset.

The New York Times, May 2001: "In a really peculiar way, George W. Bush could, some day, benefit financially from his own administration's decisions, through his father's investments. The average American doesn't know that and, to me, that's a jaw-dropper."
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/03/05/politics/05CARL.html

An in-depth report on Carlyle ("Carlyle's way. Making a mint inside "the iron triangle" of defense, government, and industry" by Dan Briody) was published by the business magazine Red Herring. It opens by describing the group's annual 2001 meeting, on the morning of Sept. 11:

"Like everyone else in the United States, the group stood transfixed as the events of September 11 unfolded. Present were former secretary of defense Frank Carlucci, former secretary of state James Baker III, and representatives of the bin Laden family. This was not some underground presidential bunker or Central Intelligence Agency interrogation room. It was the Ritz-Carlton in Washington, D.C., the plush setting for the annual investor conference of one of the most powerful, well-connected, and secretive companies in the world: the Carlyle Group. And since September 11, this little-known company has become unexpectedly important."
http://servedfor.valuead.com/code?pid=88&gid=1&oin=0&rid=479079561&dom=5&dow=6&hod=0

Hitting the Trifecta

Before Sept. 11th, the policies advocated by PNAC and its associated initiatives would have seemed extreme and dangerous to most Americans.

Although PNAC included his brother and the key national security figures in his regime, George W. Bush did not run his 2000 election campaign on the PNAC platform. Candidate Bush instead warned that Clinton had overextended U.S. forces around the world and called for a more "modest America": an America that does not engage in nation building and worldwide intervention, an America that lives at peace with other countries and avoids foreign entanglements.

Of course, as soon as the Bush regime came to power, they dropped the soothing rhetoric and immediately blustered and blundered their way into international isolation. Bush set the tone on Dec. 18, 2000, when he commented on his selection to the presidency by a 5-4 vote of the Supreme Court as follows: "This would be easier if it were a dictatorship... but only if I was the dictator." This was supposed to be a joke?

From that moment, the U.S. undermined or withdrew from the ABM treaty with Russia, the biowarfare convention, efforts at nuclear proliferation, and many other treaties and convents. By Sept. 11, the Bush regime was already treated like a joke at home and faced an imminent series of scandals, including Enron and the publishing of the U.S. media consortium's Florida recount results.

Given the initial unpopularity of their ideas, how exactly were the PNAC crew planning, long in advance of the 2000 election, to make their megalomania fly with the American people?

A quote from the PNAC site reads: "...the process of transformation" of American policy, "even if it brings revolutionary change, is likely to be a long one, absent some catastrophic and catalyzing event - like a new Pearl Harbor."
Characteristically, this little bombshell is buried on Page 51 of the report (page 63 of the PDF document):
http://www.newamericancentury.org/RebuildingAmericasDefenses.pdf

As we now know, they got their Pearl Harbor.

Although every attempt until now to establish a connection between the crime of 9/11 and the Saddam regime has been exposed as sheer fabrication, the Bush regime is still using the Sept. 11th attacks as infinite casus belli to justify the very same series of wars that the PNAC crew and their neoconservative allies had planned long in advance - starting with Iraq.

The cavalier instrumentalization of Sept. 11 is perhaps best exemplified in one of Bush's oft-repeated "jokes" for Republican audiences during late 2001. Noting he had promised not to dip into the Social Security fund or run a federal budget deficit except in the case of war, national emergency or a recession, Bush declaimed: "Lucky me. I guess I hit the trifecta!"

The Crusade Continues

Now in discussion as a future U.S. plenipotentiary of Iraq is James Woolsey, former head of the CIA under Clinton. Not a PNACer himself, he is fully in tune with the line. At a UCLA campus speaking engagement of a group called "Americans for Victory Over Terrorism," Woolsey declared that "the United States is engaged in World War IV." The third world war, for those who missed it, was the cold war with the Soviets.

Woolsey: "This fourth world war, I think, will last considerably longer than either World Wars I or II did for us. Hopefully not the full four-plus decades of the Cold War." As the enemies, Woolsey defines the Shi'a rulers of Iran, the "fascists of Iraq and Syria," and Al Qaeda. "As we move toward a new Middle East over the years and, I think, over the decades to come ... we will make a lot of people very nervous."

CNN wrote: "Singling out Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak and the leaders of Saudi Arabia, said, 'We want you nervous. We want you to realize now, for the fourth time in a hundred years, this country and its allies are on the march and that we are on the side of those whom you -- the Mubaraks, the Saudi Royal family -- most fear: We're on the side of your own people.'"
http://edition.cnn.com/2003/US/04/03/sprj.irq.woolsey.world.war/

Woolsey thus seems to have all of the major Arab Muslim countries in his sights. This is the man who may soon be running Iraq, which is only one stop in the regime's plans for a new crusade.

None of this can be described accurately as conservative. PNAC is a radical plan to transform the face of the planet, downright Bolshevik in its ambitions, and it has even come under fire on the American right, among the rising movement of "paleoconservatives."* The goal, as the initiative's grandiose name declares, is to secure unquestioned U.S. geostrategic dominance of the planet for the next century. If that takes a thirty-year war, so be it.
---

John Pilger on PNAC and Richard Perle:
"What America needed was 'a new Pearl Harbor'" http://pilger.carlton.com/print/124759

PNAC additional info, history, and resources
from the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace
Origins of Regime Change in Iraq
http://www.ceip.org/files/nonprolif/templates/Publications.asp?p=8&PublicationID=1214
Resources and support documents
http://www.ceip.org/files/Iraq/index.htm#regime_change

For insight into the "paleoconservative" view, see www.antiwar.com. This extremely useful site is updated daily, with links to the day's best war-related stories and many interesting columns. We can only wish them success in their endeavor to strip conservative support away from the radical Bush regime.

[TeeYiYi]

9. Thanks Jack! . . .

Interest in this subject seems to wax and wane at DU. Especially with the primaries in full swing. But this subject needs to remain in the forefront of the minds of everyone old and young; DU newbies and oldies alike. A thread that summarizes, informs and reminds people about PNAC is a good thing to have, a good thing to bookmark and a good thing to keep kicked . . .

TYY :kick:

[JohnyCanuck]

34. kick n/t

kick

[ComerPerro]

10. kick, bookmark

[Sam Lowry]

11. Hmm, yeah...

Do we need to blame a secret cabal for Bush's decision to fuck up the Middle East? I guess it's comforting, but can't we just blame Bush?

[Trajan]

12. It isnt a secret ....

Its an overt association between like-minded individuals ..

You object to exposing their machinations ? ...

Why ? ..

[plurality]

13. uhh it's hardly secret seeing how they posted it on the internet...

for the whole world to see. Not to mention it's principle members include Bush's VP, SecDef, Brother, UnderSecDef, VP's Chief of Staff, and their signatures are right at the bottom of their manifesto. But I'm sure you knew that already since you bothered to read the documents.

Edited as to not be deleted.

[Sam Lowry]

14. Yikes!

Touched a nerve, I guess. Perhaps the confluence of your PNAC and the Bush administration makes it seem silly to blame the think tank rather than the policy-making body. Who gives a fuck what eggheads on K street or wherever say when they're exporting war over at the White House? We all know where those clowns stand and what they want.

It just seems that blaming sinister organizations with creepy acronyms makes a lot of us feel wise and important. PNAC, S&B, etc., it's all the same crap.

Spooky!

P.S. You wrote: "God forbid you turn out to be just another jack-ass ridiculing facts that distress their fragile world view."

Hey, ow!

You're lucky I don't break your butt off.

[plurality]

15. sorry, to be harsh

it bugs me that people dismiss this as conspiracy theory.

as i said, this isn't just some think tank, filled with goof ball lobbyists.

Some of it's founder's, include Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, Scooter Libby, Paul Wolfowitz, Jeb Bush, and many others. This isn't just some think tank, it's the people actually RUNNING THE COUNTRY.

[Sam Lowry]

16. That's my point

The fact that PNAC and the Bush administration intersect so much makes it silly to me to make such hay over PNAC when you might as well go to the source of the problem, which is the same people anyway.

[plurality]

18. but it's not just Bush and crew

there are also prominent Dems, and media people involved. This goes to much more than just Bush. We have to expose all of these scum otherwise it'll be like a hydra, cut off one head, and nine more show up.

[Sam Lowry]

20. So what?

There's plenty of Dems who agreed with the Iraq War. One of them is running for president. I don't need to tell you that there are some media who agree too. It's a point of view. Not the right one, but there you have it. A group was arranged to organize and flesh out this point of view. But people have turned PNAC into the new Masons.

[plurality]

23. maybe it's because Iraq isn't their only goal.

They've pretty much spelled out their plans for world domination in their little book, and you say so what.

Would you have said so what if you lived in Germany in 1934 and people were telling you to read this unknown book called 'Mein Kamp' to get some insight into how truly fucked up your Fuhrer was?

The whole reason for spreading the word about PNAC is because right now, Bush and crew can slime out of the blame by saying, well the CIA mislead us, or well so what if the were no WMDs Saddam was a bad guy. PNAC shows that these guys have been planning wars for profit for a long time and that these guys are criminals. Voting them out of office is not enough, they need to be in prison, and the only way to do that is to show people how bad these guys really are.

[JackRiddler]

28. Why so obtuse?

You seem to be completely missing the point. PNAC as think tank is irrelevant. Just the usual ideological or moral justifications for a policy that the elite intends to push through regardless for reasons of power.

Important is this: The later Bush regime players - Rumsfeld, Cheney, Jeb Bush, Perle, Wolfowitz, Abrams, Reich, Feith, Libby et al. (plus a bunch of neocon intellectuals) in 1997 all took a public oath committing themselves to wage war on Iraq for regime change and more war as necessary to get a new order in the Middle East. They called that PNAC, it wouldn't have mattered what they called it. What matters is that it was PUBLIC and so they were all committed and couldn't back down from each other, and what matters is WHO they were and who they then became in the Bush regime.

Even Republicans get this. Even supporters of PNAC understand its importance. If you still don't get it, if you still want to play it like it's a "conspiracy theory" (what the hell's secret about it?), well whatever, have a nice day, goodbye.

[fleetus]

24. Sam Lowry, I kind of agree with you.

DUer's throw around the term PNAC as a shortcut, but we also know that the mass media hasn't been covering it as much as DU, truthout, and other liberal outlets.

Sam Lowry, your point does not fall on deaf ears with me. I agree that is more damning to say "(insert any PNAC player) said (insert scary PNAC ideology) before he was (insert appointed White House position)," rather than "PNAC is the evil force behind our public policy!" The fact that so many people know so little about PNAC makes it a hard sell to the unenlightened.

[Seldona]

32. Well some of the PNAC

documents virtually prove Iraq is not a part of the war on terror.

This stuff was thought up in Bush the Firsts administration, and was dismissed then.

Sure is hard for Bush to keep up the WMD, imminent threat, and response to 9/11 garbage they are feeding people when it is all laid out more than a decade before by most of the people currently in power.

I think it is VERY important stuff.

[plurality]

17. Here's the statement of principles as well as PNAC's founders

tell me if any of these names look familiar to you.

http://www.newamericancentury.org/statementofprinciples.htm

June 3, 1997

American foreign and defense policy is adrift. Conservatives have criticized the incoherent policies of the Clinton Administration. They have also resisted isolationist impulses from within their own ranks. But conservatives have not confidently advanced a strategic vision of America's role in the world. They have not set forth guiding principles for American foreign policy. They have allowed differences over tactics to obscure potential agreement on strategic objectives. And they have not fought for a defense budget that would maintain American security and advance American interests in the new century.

We aim to change this. We aim to make the case and rally support for American global leadership.


As the 20th century draws to a close, the United States stands as the world's preeminent power. Having led the West to victory in the Cold War, America faces an opportunity and a challenge: Does the United States have the vision to build upon the achievements of past decades? Does the United States have the resolve to shape a new century favorable to American principles and interests?


We are in danger of squandering the opportunity and failing the challenge. We are living off the capital -- both the military investments and the foreign policy achievements -- built up by past administrations. Cuts in foreign affairs and defense spending, inattention to the tools of statecraft, and inconstant leadership are making it increasingly difficult to sustain American influence around the world. And the promise of short-term commercial benefits threatens to override strategic considerations. As a consequence, we are jeopardizing the nation's ability to meet present threats and to deal with potentially greater challenges that lie ahead.

We seem to have forgotten the essential elements of the Reagan Administration's success: a military that is strong and ready to meet both present and future challenges; a foreign policy that boldly and purposefully promotes American principles abroad; and national leadership that accepts the United States' global responsibilities.

snip

Elliott Abrams Gary Bauer William J. Bennett Jeb Bush

Dick Cheney Eliot A. Cohen Midge Decter Paula Dobriansky Steve Forbes

Aaron Friedberg Francis Fukuyama Frank Gaffney Fred C. Ikle

Donald Kagan Zalmay Khalilzad I. Lewis Libby Norman Podhoretz

Dan Quayle Peter W. Rodman Stephen P. Rosen Henry S. Rowen

Donald Rumsfeld Vin Weber George Weigel Paul Wolfowitz

Let's see, I see the current VP, current Gov. of Florida who also hand Bush the presidency, the current Secretary of Defense, the current Undersecretary of Defense, the Vice President's Chief of Staff, and the current Middle East envoy in there. Yeah, this is just like saying the Mason's rule the world isn't it?

:eyes:

[fleetus]

19. Bookmark, Kick

Thanks for compiling all this. I just learned about bookmarks, and this appears to be the perfect thread to try it on.

:yourock: :kick:

[TeeYiYi]

21. Good choice for a first bookmark fleetus . . .

. . . and Welcome to DU! :hi:

TYY

[Stephanie]

22. Thanks TeeYiYi! It's the perfect time to repost this.

It's just the right time to bring this back. If you want to connect dots, PNAC is where you start.

To the poster above, the REASON to discuss PNAC instead of just talking about the administration, is because PNAC precedes the administration, PNAC laid out the agenda that this administration is following, and the existence of this preconceived agenda explains a lot of the contortions this administration has gone through to get their war on in Iraq. And the administration's stubborn insistence on continuing to follow the neo-cons' agenda, despite the fact that their schemes repeatedly FAIL, explains many of the disconcerting statements we hear out of this WH, such as rumblings about Iran and Syria, etc.

PNAC is the blueprint, Cheney helped create it, and Cheney is following it. That's why we need to know about it.





TeeYiYi: :yourock:


~S

[TeeYiYi]

25. HEY, Hey Stephanie !.!.! <|:-P . . .

:bounce: . . . I was hoping you were still around. :bounce: I posted this today in the 2004 Primaries forum but it got moved to General Discussion. Oh well. It has probably lasted longer here anyway. There were several threads over there in '04' earlier today with PNAC in the title, and a few people who seemed like they could use a refresher course on the subject :

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=132&topic_id=227573

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=132&topic_id=223379

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=132&topic_id=234231

Good to see you Stephanie. This thread just gets better and better with each new addition. Don't forget to bookmark it. :bounce:

TYY :hi:

[JohnyCanuck]

26. Get the word out.

For a while now I've been photocopying articles like some of the ones listed in this thread and then stamping each copy with a list of progressive web sites in red ink (had a rubber stamp made up at a local office supply store). I then carry these photocopies around with me wherever I go and leave behind copies in coffee shops, fast food joints, book stores, libraries, bus seats, laundromats etc. anywhere someone would be likely to pick it up. Sometimes I purchase a newspaper from a newspaper box and slip a copy into each newspaper that's in the box.

[Lorien]

27. Kick

:kick:

[petrock2004]

30. another

:kick:

just for good measure

[petrock2004]

29. after you've read that,

make sure to go here:

http://www.militarycity.com/valor/honor.html

and see exactly what this policy has done

:cry: :grr:

[JackRiddler]

31. kickeroo

[Stephanie]

33. I'll kick it, for the new DUers!

:kick:

[ComerPerro]

35. I've kicked it before and I'll kick it again

:kick:

:dem:

Please, if you are new to DU, especially if you supported Bush in 2000, please please read this and connect the dots...

[oasis]

36. PNAC will need a draft in order to supply troops to its occupation forces.