Rebuilding America's Defences: Strategies, Forces And Resources - Egad!!

[fessie]

From the Sunday Herald, Sept 15, 2002 article by Neil Mackay
A SECRET blueprint for US global domination reveals that President Bush and his cabinet were planning a premeditated attack on Iraq to secure ‘regime change’ even before he took power in January 2001.

The blueprint, uncovered by the Sunday Herald, 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), George W Bush’s younger brother Jeb and Lewis Libby (Cheney’s chief of staff). The document, entitled Rebuilding America’s Defences: Strategies, Forces And Resources For A New Century, was written in September 2000 by the neo-conservative 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: ‘The United States has for decades sought to play a more permanent role in Gulf regional security. 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 document supports a ‘blueprint for maintaining global US pre-eminence, precluding the rise of a great power rival, and shaping the international security order in line with American principles and interests’.

the whole newspaper article

the PNAC document itself

[Rooster]

The Sunday Herald uncovered this?

I remember being scared witless by Project for the New American Century BEFORE the election. This stuff was not secret, or even hidden. I just thought that the people of the US would laugh themselves silly about it, and would NEVER elect Bush.
I was wrong about the laughing part.

[fessie]

The funny thing is that doing searches on the PNAC web page gives some dead-ends that seem to be deliberate. I’d enjoyed reading Eve’s posts on religious freedom and wondered what the PNAC had to say on the issue - try searching “wicca” and you get a link w/some visible text, but it’s to the wrong document.

I just thought it was funny that people have been debating the “are there any WMD” issue when clearly it didn’t matter whether there were any or not, insofar as the Administration is concerned. BTW on the PNAC web page there is text from a speech Cheney gave to the VA in 2002 where he clearly stated that there’s no doubt Iraq has WMD.

Funny thing is, too - I did my search wrong at first (or I wouldn’t have opened a new thread) - this subject was covered in Great Debates in February, but in a “we might be right” vein. Huh?

[tdn]

*Originally posted by fessie *
**[ url=http://www.sundayherald.com/print27735] the whole newspaper article [ /url]

How reputable is this paper?

[fessie]

It’s not the Christian Science Monitor, but seems to have normal headlines - can’t attest to their pedigree (I did try to stay away from interest groups in seeking references).

How about this one, from South Africa’s Independent Media Centre:

WOLFOWITZ-LIBBY-PERLE-FEITH = AUTHORS OF IRAQ WAR
by Rosalinda • Saturday March 08, 2003 at 08:17 PM

"In 1996, Richard Perle, now a Pentagon adviser, and Douglas Feith, now a Rumsfeld aide, helped write a report about how Israel could transcend the problems with the Palestinians by changing the “balance of power” in the Middle East, and by replacing Saddam. “The hawks saw their big chance after 9/11, but they feared that it would be hard to sell a eschatological scheme to stomp out Islamic terrorism by recreating the Arab world. So they found Saddam guilty of a crime he could commit later: helping Osama unleash hell on us.”

[source: New York Times, by Maureen Dowd, March 2]

New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd locates the origins of President Bush’s recent speech at the American Enterprise Institute, in the neo-con chickenhawks’ plans drawn up ten years ago.

“Conservatives began drawing up steroid-fueled plans to reorder the world a decade ago, imperial blueprints fantastical enough to make `Star Wars’ look achievable,” Dowd writes.

from this article

(the NYTimes won’t let me see the Dowd article for free, or I’d quote it directly)
And here’s a quick read from the Guardian Unlimited on the same topic

Try doing a search using Wolfowitz and Perle, it’s pretty interesting.

[tdn]

Thanks, fessie. While at lunch, I was telling a friend about this. She didn’t seem all that surprised, and she sent me this link.

This is all starting to look very familiar. I think there was a Pit rant about this a few months ago.