Well it is entirely clear to me now that if American voters had only known that a think tank with influence in the halls of power had ideas in concordance with those of Bushites in general we would certainly have had a revolution by now and Speaker Pelosi would be running the government from a giant Pentagon transport plane.
(takes breath)
The ideas and policies themselves aren’t important, people. It’s that organizations and lobbies and think tanks promote them. It’s indescribably Evil. Especially if your side’s organizations and lobbies and think tanks don’t set the agenda.
Please explain how that makes it a conspiracy? What precisely do you mean by the word? An organization of like-minded individuals working to put their ideas into action? That would make The Sierra Club a conspiracy. If your definition incudes some nefarious aspect, please share it.
Trick? What trick? Theywere never secreticve about their agenda. They even shared it wit Clinton, trying to get him on board.
You don’t like their ideas? Fine. But’s that’s all there is to it.
As far as I am concerned I hope there are many other groups of smart people thinking what would be in the best long term interest of the U.S. I have no doubt that each of them would like to see their ideas implemented. Some will be. Some won’t. That hardly makes the successful ones a conspiracy.
This is really the key point. The close ties between the PNAC and the administration are significant because it provides such clear evidence that invading Iraq was a policy objective that had nothing to do with 9/11, WMDs or the Iraqi people’s welfare. For many of us, that’s a big fat “duh!”, but there are still quite a few people who believe we invaded Iraq because the administration thought they had WMDs and were a threat to us, and would have avoided an invasion if they’d had better intelligence.
I don’t think it does, because the justification that the PNAC used back in the '90s for wanting Sadaam’s overthrow was, first, his development of WMD programs and failure to cooperate with weapons inspectors, and second, his repression of the Iraqis and his threats to his neighbors. So, the reasons the Bush administration gave for attacking were consistant with the PNAC justification for attacking (or removing Sadaam by other means).
Already asked and answered here. But if you need to read it again, I’ll write t again: I am utterly surprised by the number of Americans that appear unaware of the foreign policy hi-jack by a rather extremist and globally dangerous (one only need read their agenda to realize this) group.
And if one person has learned as much by my opening this thread, then that’s good enough for me.
BTW, the real genesis of the group actually goes back all the way to Bush the elder’s Administration.
It’s called the Wolfowitz Doctrine and caused much chagrin to the President himself when it was leaked. Original NYT article here, although it’s on file and you’d have to pay to read it.
So no, this is certainly nothing of the sort of the “chicken and the egg” debate, for we clearly know what came first. The Fucking Insane Plan.
Oakie, might want to work on your insults just a tad. What are you, like nine or ten?
Except Bush 1. The guy who encouraged the southern Shiites to hold their own little Warsaw uprising, remember?
The significance of PNAC is merely that it provides evidence that we were lied into a war of aggression. It’s actually a highly positive development that even the most hardcore partisans in this thread now accept it as mere obvious fact.
Now, if only those same people hadn’t laughed off our descriptions of the PNAC connection as a “conspiracy theory” five years earlier, there might be several hundred thousand more people alive today.
Yeah, and James Baker, and the “realists” who figure buddying up to dictators is the best policy.
This is the sort of foreign policy championed by Kissenger and Nixon. In fact, these sorts invariably PREFER a dictatorship over an open society, a dictator can be bought. These are the people that gave us the Shah, Pinochet, and on and on. These are the people who were happy to quietly cheer Saddam when he attacked Iran.
In the PNAC report I read through, Saddam was not mentioned as a specific and immediate threat, but one of several potential small rogue states which could represent a potential long-term strategic threat.
The administration did not try to convince us to invade Iraq as part of a long-term strategic plan. They knew that a preemptive invasion would be hard to sell without evidence of “grave and gathering danger”. So they asserted that Saddam had developed WMDs that represented an imminent threat to our safety. They also vehemently denied that they intended to invade Iraq from the get-go, well before 9/11. (Which would be hard to reconcile with their repeated implications of connections between Saddam and al Qaeda.)
So what they told us is quite a bit different from what their actual reason appears to have been. If they’d given the PNAC arguments to justify invading Iraq, they would never have been able to do it.
That’s not what they said, though. They said that Iraq had prohibited weapons programs, that they had chemical weapons (which wasn’t true, for the most part), that they probably had biological weapons, that they had an active nuclear program and might be close to developing nuclear weapons and that the threat from Iraq was “grave and growing”, and that we needed to invade Iraq before they got those capabilities; before they became an imminent threat.
And if you look at the other, pre-Bush Iraq documents on the page, the justification for regime change is laid out. For instance, here’s this testimony by Wolfowitz:
And, in this letter to President Clinton, the PNAC people urge Sadaam’s removal, stating:
Obviously, the big mistake anti-Vietnam war protestors made was marching and supporting antiwar candidates.
Sure, they helped turn the tide of public opinion against the war. But they could have had a major influence so much earlier if they hadn’t wasted time talking about policy failures and casualties, and instead had focused on the little known New Frontier advisers who had so much influence on Kennedy and Johnson and whose anti-communist agenda helped push us into a war under false pretenses.
Similarly, we now need to put aside arguments about military and political failures in Iraq, and concentrate on educating the public about PNAC and the color of Douglas Feith’s underwear.
Letter to Bush from PNAC – once again, I ask you to notice the signatories.
(boding mine)
IOW, Iraq was doomed from the start. The fact that they acknowledge that even if “evidence doesn’t link Saddam/Iraq to 9/11” the attack should go ahead. No other possible interpretation is there? The rest was all a snowjob as most rational people have finally concluded.
*Too ironic to pass up and a big part of why lost all respect for Mr Powell – the clownish UN performance the other major factor: Iraq No Threat
It’s a video. And in living color no less. Little room for equivocation here.
Couple of other interesting pronouncements:
A year later?
Of course, as we all know, “9/11 changed everything.”
And as PNAC estates, they clearly reaedy to exploit said tragedy for advancig their own cause.
Now, I am not amongst those that put forth Governmental iimplications, affiliations, nor willful facilitation of the 9/11 attack. Just the massive numbers required for such a conspiracy to work, makes more than highly improbable in my view. OTOH, it is also very clear they saw the window of opportunity they had sort of hoped for and did everything within their considerable powers to put their stage one part of the plan into action.
They did it through a repugnant and immoral campaign, consisting in the manipulation of a very (naturally) emotionally torn nation. Lies on top of lies.
And all for what? Iraq in its present state? Or the ever-growing estate of Dick Chainy and his groupies and associates…
Let’s say I believe, quite sincerely, that alcohol makes people better drivers; more relaxed and confident behind the wheel. Let’s say I believe this so passionately that I start a lobby to pressure the government to abolish drunk driving laws and to encourage people to drink, say by offering shots at toll booths. I call this lobby PNAR, Project for a New American Roadway. I attract more people and PNAR becomes quite a powerful lobby. We are discreetly–very discretely–funded by the alcohol industry so we get a spiffy set of offices, a shiny website and a glossy magazine, The Weavely Standard. We write letters and articles importuning Congress, the President, and the public to support our stupid plan.
What have I done wrong? Everything I’ve done is according to my first amendment rights, even the funds I receive. (And I have no problem taking funds from alcohol producers, after all, I believe they’re on the side of the angels.)
Let’s say that there is a change in administrations. The previous administration had pretty much politely ignored me and my lobby, but the new one is openly sympathetic. Many members of my lobby are offered posts at HHS, DOT, and Justice. The President eagerly adopts many of my ideas. The ensuing carnage on the highways is appalling.
Again, there’s nothing I’ve done wrong, except be an idiot. If the President is fool enough to listen to me, he bears full responsibility. Any PNAR members that now work for the government bear some responsibility, depending on how much power they had. Anyone who voted for the current President also shares some blame, as it was pretty obvious he was an idiot from the get-go.
However PNAR itself is blameless. PNAR can’t tell a single traffic cop what to do or what laws to enforce. All they can do is persuade. And everyone has the right to persuade anyone of their ideas, no matter how stupid they may be.