Tuesday, May 02, 2006

The PNAC Paper Trail

The longer the fiasco in Iraq drags on, the more we hear the folks who cooked up the idea of invading that sand dune republic denying that they had anything to do with it. Crooks and Liars provided this John Bolton quote from a press conference televised last week on CNN.
We did not violate the UN charter in the war to overthrow Saddam Hussein and that plan was not drawn…at the Project for the New American Century.

John's memory must be slipping, what with all those responsibilities he has as Ambassador to the United Nations now. Maybe it's time to help him refresh it.

Let's take a stroll down PNAC Lane.

June 3, 1997: PNAC issues its Statement of Principles. "American foreign and defense policy is adrift," it states at the beginning, and goes on to criticize the Clinton administration. This document contains no specific mention of Iraq, but does admonish that, "America has a vital role in maintaining peace and security in Europe, Asia, and the Middle East," and that "we need to increase defense spending significantly if we are to carry out our global responsibilities today and modernize our armed forces for the future[.]"

Among the signatories are Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld and Paul Wolfowitz, as well as PNAC co-founders Bill Kristol and Robert Kagan.

January 19, 1998: John Bolton publishes "Congress Versus Iraq" in Bill Kristol's Weekly Standard. He slams President Clinton for being soft on Iraq, and exhorts Congress to force Clinton into taking more aggressive action against Saddam Hussein.

January 26, 1998: PNAC sends a letter to President Clinton urging military action to remove the Saddam Hussein regime from power. A key passage states that if America continues its containment policy, "…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."

Keep that in mind the next time young Mister Bush says invading Iraq wasn't about Israel or oil. (Please note that I have no problem with America keeping Israel under its protective umbrella. But we didn't need to invade Iraq to do it.)

And, oh, one of the signatures on that letter belongs to a guy named John Bolton.

A copy of the letter appears in the Washington Post on January 27.

January 30, 1998: PNAC founders Bill Kristol and Robert Kagan publish "Bombing is not Enough" in the New York Times. "Saddam Hussein must go," it says. "If Mr. Clinton is serious about protecting us and our allies from Iraqi biological and chemical weapons, he will order ground forces to the gulf. Four heavy divisions and two airborne divisions are available for deployment. The President should act, and Congress should support him in the only policy that can succeed."

There's no question: PNAC was specifically calling for an armed invasion of Iraq by ground forces. How many teams of lawyers do they need to talk their way around that?

February 2, 1998: Robert Kagan publishes "Saddam's Impending Victory" in Bill Kristol's Weekly Standard. Kagan again calls for removal of Hussein by force and compares him to Hitler.

February 26, 1998: Kristol and Kagan publish "A 'Great Victory' for Iraq" in the Washington Post. "Unless we are willing to live in a world where everyone has to 'do business' with Saddam and his weapons of mass destruction, we need to be willing to use U.S. air power and ground troops to get rid of him."

March 9, 1998: Bolton publishes "Kofi Hour" in the Weekly Standard and criticizes the Clinton administration for working through the UN to deal with Hussein.

September 18, 1998: PNAC's Paul Wolfowitz testifies before the House National Security Committee on Iraq during which he condemns the Clinton's Iraq policy. "The Clinton Administration repeatedly makes excuses for its own weakness…"

September 28, 1998: Robert Kagan's "A Way to Oust Saddam" appears in the Weekly Standard. "It has long been clear that the only way to rid the world of Saddam's weapons of mass destruction is to rid Iraq of Saddam."

November 16, 1998: An non-attributed editorial in the Weekly Standard titled "How to Attack Iraq" says, "It now seems fairly certain that some time in the next few weeks the Clinton administration will have to strike Iraq. There really are no acceptable alternatives."

January 4, 1999: Robert Kagan's "Saddam Wins-Again" appears in the Weekly Standard. More castigation of UN and Clinton administration efforts to contain Saddam Hussein.

Skip Ahead

There's much more. You can read the entire PNAC literature on Iraq at the group's website, starting here.

But let's take a close look at two key PNAC documents from the 21st century.

Rebuilding America's Defenses was published in September 2000, just before the presidential election that brought George W. Bush into power. This neoconservative manifesto revealed that the PNAC's ambitions in the Middle East were only obliquely related to Saddam Hussein.
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. (Page 14.)

In other words, Hussein was merely the convenient excuse for establishing permanent military bases in the heart of the Middle East and controlling the flow of the region's oil.

But the PNACers realized that the road to achieving their dream of a global American empire was "…likely to be a long one, absent some catastrophic and catalyzing event--like a new Pearl Harbor." (Page 51.)

On September 11, 2001 PNAC got its Pearl Harbor, and a significant portion of its membership held key policy making posts in the Bush administration, some of the most notable among them being Cheney, Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, and Bolton.

On September 20, nine days after the 9/11 attacks, PNAC wrote a letter to Mister Bush that said, "…even if evidence does not link Iraq directly to the attack, any strategy aiming at the eradication of terrorism and its sponsors must include a determined effort to remove Saddam Hussein from power in Iraq."

#

DNA evidence couldn't provide better proof that the PNAC formulated the Bush administration's Iraq policy than the paper trail the PNAC itself provides. For Bolton to deny that the PNAC "planned" the Iraq invasion goes beyond irony, beyond the absurd, beyond the Orwellian.

There's a temptation to shrug one's shoulders and say, "Why dwell on this? It's in the past."

But it's not in the past. We're living with the neoconservative nightmare today and there's no telling how long it will take to undo their damage, partly because they're still in power and they're still doing damage.

16 comments:

  1. Anonymous1:13 PM

    Jeff, I'm glad you brought this up.
    There are many in America who still don't know or were aware of the PNAC agenda. It should be in front of every liberal blogsite so that people understand the treachery of this administration and why some of us do what we do. I know a lot of people will have a better understanding of why we oppose this Administration.
    It should be in the history books as to how a group of people were able to hijack a country!
    I want my once Great Country back!!

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  2. Can we get "Colbert" to question President Bush on the PNAC connection, he did such a great job with William Kristol the other night, think what he could do with the regular people, Kristol is a regular TV personna on the F channel Great article Jeff

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  3. Anonymous1:57 PM

    I suppose the more important question, in all seriousness, is why should we care whether people from PNAC were involved in the planning or not?

    I'm sorry, crap is crap! And when an idea starts effecting the lives of human beings then there should be a law against it! PNAC and its 'crap' have brought nothing but destruction, grief, graft and corruption under the guise of a bunch of good ole boys. How much longer are the people of America willing to stand by these good ole boys and watch it be destroyed?

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  4. Anonymous5:15 PM

    Scott
    Crap is crap, and groups that generate crap should have any future ideas given a bit more scrutiny, to keep crap out of the system. PNAC may not have been the only crap source, but any future "suggestions" from them should be concidered suspect.

    ReplyDelete
  5. Anonymous5:31 PM

    Oh...there is a law against that crap, they used to call it 'war profiteering'!

    ReplyDelete
  6. Anonymous7:23 AM

    We have had 6 years of lies, graft, corruption, blatant cronyism, and "interpretation" of laws that favor the very very few and powerful. That does not sound like America.

    We have had powerful lobby groups and "think tanks" which are funded by large corporations manipulating the government process as well as setting forth an agenda that serves the purpose of the monied and powerful.

    We are in a war that was fanagled, falsified and set in motion (note: I avoided the word planned) many years in advance. To what purpose? Humanitarian? Well, at least that is what they are calling it now since all the lies (aka bad intelligence) are coming forth. If we were so concerned about humanitarian efforts and concerned about dictators (aka evil doerers) then why aren't we in the Sudan? Why did we allow Rowanda to happen? Why are we ignoring Uganda? Why was "ethnic cleansing" a non issue?

    We made a story for Viet Nam and we have made a story for Iraq, and we are after the natural resources once again. To set up a situation that is false in an effort to take what is not ours (by overt theft of making a deal with a connection) and to accomplish these ends people must die (aka collateral damage..cost of war) sounds like a crime to me. We have laws against this in our country. But then I forgot...our Prez can do whatever he finds necessary....

    Yep, they planned for it in advance. The people who were involved in the idea (aka planning) were installed in posts of very high power and the coffers of big business were opened to help this along in exchange for more BlingBling.

    Crap, we never learn from our past mistakes and in this case we can't seem to learn from our very recent mistakes. It isn't in the past, it is now and will be into the future. To ignore is and "move on" is something we cannot do because we have a responsibility to know the facts, and refuse the art of denial that our present government has developed to an art form.

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  7. Something else I consider when looking at the Federalist Papers--they were written by three guys. (Hamilton, Jay, and, I think, Madison). They did not represent the entire "framing" body, and several things in the Fed Papers are contrary to what the Constitution actually says.

    In other words, they're not the Constitution.

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  8. Anonymous6:54 AM

    What law do you think PNAC has violated? Specifically, I mean? By putting forth their ideas...

    Scott, Meribeth pretty much covered it.
    Aside from your basic moral laws it will be hard to bring a case against PNAC.
    Of course I'd love to see this whole administration put in the Hague. That would make up most of PNAC.

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  9. Slightly related to the last few comments: it seems that the visible non-administration PNACers trying to distance themselves from the administration are thinking at least partly about the legal angle.

    As RSK suggests, having the idea and acting on it in a way that may be illegal are two different things.

    Perle, Buckley, Kagan, Kristol and Fukuyama are just a few of the big name PNACers we're now seeing deny direct responsibility for anything that may or may not have happened in the Bush White House.

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  10. Anonymous2:23 PM

    Scott, Sometimes I wonder if you just like to play devil's advocate.
    I lean socialist in matters of corporations raping this country (Oil for one), the health industry, Education and taxes.
    I will go for bu$h hiding behind our constitution when he and his neo-cons stop using it to wipe their backsides with it and respect it!
    The constitution is what I defended my country for! Not some individual.
    Right now we need to take some extreme measures to right the almost sunken ship that is the USA!
    Go ahead, ask me, "What constitutional laws do you think bu$h and his cronies have violated"?
    But before you do, please, use your imagination.

    ReplyDelete
  11. Anonymous5:26 PM

    Thank you, sorry for getting testy!

    ReplyDelete
  12. Anonymous8:22 PM

    Foreign Aid
    http://usinfo.state.gov/usa/infousa/trade/files/98-916.pdf


    Clean BReak
    http://www.iasps.org/strat1.htm
    http://rightweb.irc-online.org/profile/1392


    Juan cole paper on Israel influence
    http://www.juancole.com/2006/04/petition-to-conference-of-presidents.html

    AIPAC v. Norman Finkelstein: A Debate on Israel's Assault on Gaza
    http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=06/06/29/1420258

    The Israel Lobby
    http://www.lrb.co.uk/v28/n06/mear01_.html

    AIPAC

    http://www.ifamericansknew.org/stats/cost_of_israel.html
    http://www.dailykos.com/story/2006/8/1/9926/22761

    FDD
    http://www.dailykos.com/story/2006/8/15/115416/068


    UN resolution Israel has violated
    http://www.dailykos.com/comments/2006/8/17/11448/5042/7#c7

    PNAC lying
    http://zenhuber.blogspot.com/2006/05/pnac-paper-trail.html

    ReplyDelete
  13. Nice list of links. Thanks.

    ReplyDelete
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