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Volume 10 Issue 10…Dedicated to the Dialogue on Race…March 9, 2007
Bit of History
Project for the New
American Century
A DC-based think tank, the Project for the New American Century (PNAC) was
co-founded by William Kristol, a conservative writer for the Weekly Standard
that is owned by Ruppert Murdoch, and Robert Kagan circa 1996. An initiative
established by the New Citizenship Project, a 501(c)(3) organization, PNAC has
been funded by the Sarah Scaife, John M. Olin and Bradley Foundations.
PNAC's roster of current and former members reads like Who's Who of Republican
Party politics, the George W. Bush Administration and the neo-conservative
movement. In addition to its co-founders, they include Eliot Abrams, Richard
Armitage, William Bennett, John Bolton, Jeb Bush, Dick Cheney, Don Kagan,
Zalmay Khalilzad, Lewis "Scooter" Libby, Donald Rumsfeld, Paul
Wolfowitz, Gary Bauer, James B. Borow, Rudy Boschwitz, Eliot Cohen, Steve
Forbes, Aaron Friedberg, Frank Gaffney, Fred Ikle, Jeane Kirkpatrick, Charles
Krauthammer, Christopher Maletz, Daniel McKivergan, Richard Perle, Norman
Podhoretz, Dan Quayle, Stephen Rosen, Henry Rowen, Abram Shulsky, James
Woolsey, Bruce Jackson, Mark Gerson, Randy Scheunemann, Ellen Bork, Gary
Schmitt, Thomas Donnelly and Reuel Marc Gerecht.
PNAC members served with groups like Friends of the Democratic Center in
Central America, which supported US involvement in Nicaragua and El Salvador
(Iran-Contra), and with groups like the Committee for the Present Danger, which
held that a nuclear war with the Soviet Union was "winnable." PNAC
established the Committee for the Liberation of Iraq, which funneled millions
of tax dollars to support the Iraqi National Congress and Ahmed Chalabi, who
was convicted of bank fraud in absentia by a Jordanian court.
PNAC is famous for its advocacy of a global US empire and its recommendations
to achieve this Pax Americana. In 1998, it sent President Bill Clinton a letter
urging the overthrow of Saddam Hussein, citing the threat Saddam's stockpile of
weapons of mass destruction posed to US Middle East allies and oil resources.
Its September 2000 report, "Rebuilding America's Defenses," outlined
steps to create this US empire, including permanent bases in Europe, Asia and
the Middle East, a modernized military, missile defense and dominance of space
and cyberspace.
When George W. Bush took office in 2001, PNAC came to power, running the
Pentagon, the Defense Department and White House. The attacks of 9/11 provided
the catastrophic and catalyzing event, a new Pearl Harbor, needed to kick start
its recommendations, which were echoed in Bush's September 20, 2001
"National Security Strategy."
PNAC called for the US to abandon the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty from which
the US withdrew in 2002. It suggested that, "Over the long term, Iran may
well prove as large a threat to U.S. interests in the Gulf as Iraq. And even
should U.S.-Iranian relations improve, retaining forward-based forces in the
region would still be essential for US security strategy given the longstanding
American interests in the region." (Sources: www.newamericancentury.org, http://en.wikipedia.org and http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article1665.htm)
The Dark Knight-Batman/White Ninja/Zorro has been
diligently hitting the books; he wants to play sports next year. At a new
middle school, he is making new friends, enduring his raging adolescent
hormones and trying to comprehend algebra. He has a lot on his youthful plate.
When asked for comments after discovering his math teacher had made a mistake,
the Dark One/Ninja/Zorro rhetorically asked, "How do I get it when
teachers don't?"
By John Burl Smith
Condemning the few Democrats, who are seriously working to withdraw US troops
from Iraq, Republican Whip US Rep. Roy Blunt (MO) said, "I don't believe
the Founding Fathers expected Congress to try and micro-manage the
Commander-in-Chief." What the Founders did not expect was that a president
would lie outright to the world to justify engaging in a war of choice.
Moreover, they did not expect a president’s lies would turn the entire
government, including Congress, into a propaganda machine to justify a policy
of "blood-for-oil."
Rejecting Blunt's characterization, US Rep. James Clyburn (D-SC) said, "We
are trying to find an honorable way out of a dishonorable situation created by
the president." Let us be perfectly clear, this fight is not over dollars,
it is over the willingness to kill young Americans for oil. What we have in
Iraq is not a noble social experiment "conceived in liberty and dedicated
to the proposition that all men are created equal." This is a rogue action
by a superpower against a weak sovereign nation it had degraded using war
(1991), UN sanctions and no fly-zones for years before invading to possess its
oil.
Naked piracy dressed up to resemble a suggested connection to September 11 and
the war on terror by Republicans (Project for a New American Century, PNAC),
the November 2006 vote and current polls show that the American people have
resoundingly rejected Bush's blood-for-oil policy. More lives and several
hundred billion dollars for Bush's "surge" will only bind Democrats
to blood-for-oil killing, instead of opposing a lying president and stopping
his madness.
Strategically, Bush and the Republicans are repeating Richard Nixon's sad slow
drag out of Viet Nam, which continued killing six unnecessary years. Allowing
Bush to frame the issue in terms of "protecting the troops" is
tantamount to Democrats buying into "blood for oil." Putting
themselves behind the eight ball with the American people, as they did with
"we support the president" in 2004, now we "support the
troops" is to agree that controlling oil is worth the lives of American
children. Parents aren't raising children to feed a US war machine. The
American people have never had a chance to debate or vote on Bush's
blood-for-oil policy and Congress refuses to fully examine it.
The US installed Iraqi government passed a law last week that gives big oil
companies control of Iraq's oil. Now, the Iraqi people are in the same position
as the Palestinian people under their authority. Iraq's legitimacy in the
international community is now tied to their "honoring all past
agreements," no matter how badly they serve Iraqis.
Most people do not understand that the people who make up this so-called Iraqi
government are former exiles, like Ahmed Chalabi, who still live outside of
Iraq. They were brought back to Iraq by the Bush administration to help run the
country. These are not the people who remained in the country and suffered for
the right to run their own affairs. The Iraqi government is run by people owned
by the same people that own George W. Bush.
Blood-for-oil is an obvious reflection of US greed and lust for empire. Having
lived down the US' Cold War image of the "ugly American," the 1990s
began a legacy of restraint in military matters and the aggressive pursuit of
diplomatic options. Although it was a superpower, it did not make a public show
of bullying, especially the weak. In route to bankrupting the US, Bush has
trashed its goodwill by killing thousands of Iraqis and Americans simply to
control oil at the source. Now, wedded to "blood-for-oil," Democrats
are unwilling to bring US troops home and will not be able to backpedal in
2008.
With some people, killing is a joy, so they do not have stopping sense. In
Bush's cases, they must be stopped or "blood-for-oil" will become the
US standard!!!!
Anti-War Protests
Around the world, anti-war protests are planned to commemorate the start of
"shock and awe" and the US-led illegal war against Iraq. Across the
United States, beginning March 16-19, anti-war demonstrations will be held at
Congressional offices and other sites in as many as 100 cities. Planned actions
include die-ins in San Francisco, ringing of church bells, placing "peace
candles" in the windows of homes and other non-violent demonstrations.
There is a sense of urgency to end this war as the threat of escalation to
other nations in the region grows. The series of planned events include a March
16 prayer service at the National Cathedral in Washington, D.C. and candlelight
procession to the White House. More information can be found on the Christian
Peace Witness Web site at http://go.sojo.net/ct/k7_t3Y61PXlB/
PNAC Letter to Bill
Clinton
Dear Mr. President: We are writing you because we are convinced that current
American policy toward Iraq is not succeeding, and that we may soon face a
threat in the Middle East more serious than any we have known since the end of
the Cold War. In your upcoming State of the Union Address, you have an
opportunity to chart a clear and determined course for meeting this threat. We
urge you to seize that opportunity, and to enunciate a new strategy that would
secure the interests of the U.S. and our friends and allies around the world.
That strategy should aim, above all, at the removal of Saddam Hussein's regime
from power. We stand ready to offer our full support in this difficult but
necessary endeavor.
The policy of "containment" of Saddam Hussein has been steadily
eroding over the past several months. As recent events have demonstrated, we
can no longer depend on our partners in the Gulf War coalition to continue to
uphold the sanctions or to punish Saddam when he blocks or evades UN
inspections. Our ability to ensure that Saddam Hussein is not producing weapons
of mass destruction, therefore, has substantially diminished. Even if full
inspections were eventually to resume, which now seems highly unlikely,
experience has shown that it is difficult if not impossible to monitor Iraq's
chemical and biological weapons production. The lengthy period during which the
inspectors will have been unable to enter many Iraqi facilities has made it
even less likely that they will be able to uncover all of Saddam's secrets. As
a result, in the not-too-distant future we will be unable to determine with any
reasonable level of confidence whether Iraq does or does not possess such
weapons.
Such uncertainty will, by itself, have a seriously destabilizing effect on the
entire Middle East. It hardly needs to be added that if Saddam does acquire the
capability to deliver weapons of mass destruction, as he is almost certain to
do if we continue along the present course, the safety of American troops in
the region, of our friends and allies like Israel and the moderate Arab states,
and a significant portion of the world's supply of oil will all be put at
hazard. As you have rightly declared, Mr. President, the security of the world
in the first part of the 21st century will be determined largely by how we
handle this threat.
Given the magnitude of the threat, the current policy, which depends for its
success upon the steadfastness of our coalition partners and upon the
cooperation of Saddam Hussein, is dangerously inadequate. The only acceptable
strategy is one that eliminates the possibility that Iraq will be able to use
or threaten to use weapons of mass destruction. In the near term, this means a
willingness to undertake military action as diplomacy is clearly failing. In
the long term, it means removing Saddam Hussein and his regime from power. That
now needs to become the aim of American foreign policy.
We urge you to articulate this aim, and to turn your Administration's attention
to implementing a strategy for removing Saddam's regime from power. This will
require a full complement of diplomatic, political and military efforts.
Although we are fully aware of the dangers and difficulties in implementing
this policy, we believe the dangers of failing to do so are far greater. We
believe the U.S. has the authority under existing UN resolutions to take the
necessary steps, including military steps, to protect our vital interests in
the Gulf. In any case, American policy cannot continue to be crippled by a
misguided insistence on unanimity in the UN Security Council.
We urge you to act decisively. If you act now to end the threat of weapons of
mass destruction against the U.S. or its allies, you will be acting in the most
fundamental national security interests of the country. If we accept a course
of weakness and drift, we put our interests and our future at risk.
Sincerely, Elliott Abrams, Richard L. Armitage, William J. Bennett, Jeffrey
Bergner John Bolton, Paula Dobriansky. Francis Fukuyama, Robert Kagan, Zalmay
Khalilzad,William Kristol, Richard Perle, Peter W. Rodman, Donald Rumsfeld,
William Schneider, Jr., Vin Weber, Paul Wolfowitz R. James Woolsey and Robert
B. Zoellick
Disgruntled wants to know:
US House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has taken impeachment of George W. Bush and Dick
Cheney off the table. As leader of the majority party, she is ignoring the
mandate given Democrats in the 2006 mid-term elections. Voters demanded a
course correction, which is not possible as long as Bush and Cheney continue to
run the country into the ground. If it is true that almost anyone can lead a
parade down an avenue, the real question for Pelosi is, "Can you herd
cats?
Disgruntled feels: Pathetic! Certain
segments of the US populace get their news and information from FOX News and
Rush Limbaugh. They can be heard on talk shows repeating the lies they were fed
in the lead up to the war against Iraq. Every time they parrot the false threat
Saddam Hussein posed and run the line, "the US did the right thing, and
it's better to fight "them" over there than over here," I think
what pathetically weak minds. These are the people that will believe war with
Iran or Syria is necessary to protect US national security.
Disgruntled says: A charter member of
PNAC, a jury found Lewis "Scooter" Libby guilty of lying and
obstruction of justice in the outing of covert operative Valerie Plame. Special
Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald will not pursue Libby's former boss, but we know
Dick Cheney is an un-indicted co-conspirator in White House efforts to punish
former US ambassador Joseph Wilson, a critic of the US faulty case for war
against Iraq; it is these Cheney orchestrated efforts that led to Plame's
outing.
On Lying Liars Backpedaling
The lies told to embroil the US in the war and bloody occupation of Iraq can be
found in black and white in George W. Bush's state of the union addresses for
2002 and 2003. They are available on the Internet and well worth reading again.
In these speeches, which received considerable applause from members of both
political parties, Bush laid out his faulty case for a war of choice. He
claimed Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction, sought uranium from Africa,
posed a grave and gathering threat, refused to cooperate with UN weapons
inspectors and was in material breach of UN sanctions, etc.
Now that the world knows the truth, the men that led the US down this
treacherous path of lies would like the world to think they too were duped by
faulty intelligence, when nothing could be further from the truth. In fact, the
men of PNAC running the US government created their own intelligence to justify
a course of action planned long before the US Supreme Court's decision in Bush
v. Gore (2000) brought Bush to power and set the US on its current course as
international pariah. Rather than perceived as fighting a noble cause in the
war on terror, the US is viewed as the world's most lethal terrorist.
These "honorable" men have already begun to whitewash history to make
their role in the Iraq debacle appear less menacing. But, backpedaling and
claiming the rest of the world saw Saddam as they did - an imminent threat to
global peace - will not absolve these liars or extricate them from the lethal
mess they helped create.
Mailbox: E-Mails, Faxes and
Telephone Calls
Email www.timesonline.co.uk US Generals 'Will QUIT'
if Bush Orders Iran attack...By Michael Smith and Sarah Baxter...- SOME of
America's most senior military commanders are prepared to resign if the White
House orders a military strike against Iran, according to highly placed defense
and intelligence sources. Tension in the Gulf region has raised fears that an
attack on Iran is becoming increasingly likely before George Bush leaves
office.
Email walterlx@earthlink.net
Imperial sunset?...By Daniel Dombey..Financial Times...The world that was born
with the end of the cold war is dead and buried. Today, America's sole
superpower status, which steeled the Bush administration in its determination
to go to war in Iraq, is losing relevance. Instead, the US has an ungovernable
new world on its hands. This, at least, is the outlook of some of the world's
most seasoned officials and international affairs experts, who believe that the
US has lost power and influence and that an uncertain era is about to begin.
Email www.washingtonpost.com/ How Much Embassy Is Too Much? By Elizabeth Williamson...Mention the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad to Lawrence Eagleburger and he explodes. "I defy anyone to tell me how you can use that many people. It is nuts; it's insane and it's counterproductive, and it won't work," says the Republican former secretary of state and member of the Iraq Study Group. "I've been around the State Department long enough to know you can't run an outfit like that." The nerve center of Iraq reconstruction efforts, housed in an ornate former Saddam Hussein palace with soaring ceilings and its own espresso bar, the embassy in Baghdad is one of the largest foreign missions ever operated by the State Department. Its complexity and expense, some say, hampers reconstruction efforts and drains cash from diplomatic efforts worldwide.
Email ixpandu@aol.com Bush administration claims Iraq is the central front in the war on terror-- the US response to 9-11. Iraq had nothing to do with 9-11 or Al Qaeda or the "war on terror." All the reasons given for the illegal immoral unnecessary invasion of Iraq have proved to be false or illegal. "At no time does (Bush) accept, or even recognize, that the reason Americans and Iraqis are dying in Iraq is because he ordered an invasion. And since the reasons for the invasion have been proven to be, without any doubt whatsoever, spurious, he has a lot more to atone for than tactical mistakes." --Alec Dubro
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