We’re not talking conspiracy theories, here. We’re talking about the Project for a New American Century – many of whose member hold high positions in the US government. These men openly, and unashamedly promoted wars with Afghanistan and Iraq long before Bush ever came to office.
Their letter to Congress, signed by people we all know and love (yeah, right), years before 9/11, urged the policy that we now know as the War Against Terror – make that Iraq. Their treatise, Rebuilding America’s Defenses, became the model for the Bush Doctrine….a policy of military domination and superiority around the globe.
PNAC people are all around us. Can you name them? Do you recognize them when they appear on TV as the experts and pundits who promote Bush’s wars? They’re never identified as PNAC, which seems to be the verboten word in the media. Most Americans have never heard of them. The topic is off limits, everywhere. Why?
Editorial from TvNewsLIES suggest this should be the #1 topic of discussion. Here’s a snippet:
9/11 is not the reason the Bush/PNAC agenda took shape, it is the
excuse for implementing it.
9/11 gave these men everything they could possibly ask for including unlimited power to implement their otherwise unacceptable plans for global domination. Nothing else would have enabled them to go ahead with their plans. 9/11 was the greatest thing that ever happened to these men. If that does not make you suspicious, nothing will. What are the odds that all of this is nothing more than a historical coincidence? Do these facts, at the very least, merit public discourse?
Unless the events of 9/11 are discussed openly and without apprehension, nothing else is real. When the people who benefited the most from the events of 9/11 were the very people responsible for preventing them, something is wrong. Since these people had ability to prevent, permit or conduct the events themselves, their collective and individual responses to the events must be examined and analyzed to the last detail. Anything less would be cowardice.
PNAC is not the figment of a conspiracy theorist. The people are real, and they have a self-proclaimed goal easily accessed on their own web site. The article is a discussion of what is known, and what is openly admitted by PNAC. But the serious question remains about the reasons for the silence and the refusal to acknowledge the role these men are playing in the decisions that determine the foreign policy of the US.
For the full article:
Well, it’s not a forbidden topic on the internets. I remember reading about it on a political news forum back in 1999. Then, after 9/11, that forum erupted in PNAC references to their published need for a “Pearl Harbor” event to motivate the American public. The conspiracy speculations got so deep that the owner and moderators of the site started deleting threads and banning people because they were afraid of looking ridiculous.
They felt they were on the verge of being a legitimate source of news and commentary (the owner had been on CNN even) and they didn’t want to be associated with tin-foil hatters. Hmmm… sounds like a familiar scenario, doesn’t it? ‘Course, those folks were only on the verge of what others have actually attained more recently. When the censorship and banning went down, I logged off that site and never went back.
The atmosphere here is quite different. You should check out some of Booman’s old diaries…
Am not sure where it’s forbidden? Or by whom? It may just not be talked about much lately because the topic has been gone over very thoroughly in the past, by many people.
That doesn’t mean that the information is not still relevant, or anything… just that possibly many people already know it and so don’t feel a need to go over it again.
But by all means, if you think there should be a primer on it, or more talk about it again, go ahead. There may be others who are not aware of the group, or where they are now.
Recognize any of these names?
http://rightweb.irc-online.org/charts/pnac-chart.htm
PNAC Bush Administration Members:
http://www.thefourreasons.org/pnac.htm
I think a lot of posters are misreading your title or intention to assume you are complaining that we aren’t allowed to discuss it on the blogs – (maybe oversensitivity to the recent Kos purge?)
I am assuming your actual point is here:
“They’re never identified as PNAC, which seems to be the verboten word in the media. Most Americans have never heard of them.”
And I agree 100% Yeah, most of us know about it, and have known about it a good while, but the general population don’t. And when I’ve tried to explain it to those who aren’t political junkies they look at me like I’m trying to sell them black helicopter theories.
As I’ve indicated elsewhere I wonder if the explanation is that it is so hard for JQ Public to believe that these many high powered people have thought and written the PNAC statements and plans that it just has to be some off the wall foil hat conspiracy.
Spot on; I misinterpreted the title all day for the reasons you described.
http://www.newamericancentury.org/RebuildingAmericasDefenses.pdf
“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.”
Document page 51
PDF File Page 63
*DISCLAIMER
This, of course, is evidence of nothing.
Half of the pundits on Cable and Network representing the “mainstream Right” perspective are PNAC ideologues. They are never introduced as such. Their ties to PNAC are rarely revealed.
Typically, on TV you have a fascist neoconservative “pitted” against a Lieberman Lefty in a faux “crossfire” with the effect of moving the dialogue and public perception further to the Right.
Forget the corporate media, even before the Republican takeover of PBS, PBS would roll out the Bill Kristols and Richard Perles as if they were mainstream commentators, rather than the vile extremists they really are.
There are a number of Right Wing think tanks. I don’t think PNAC is greatly different from other such groups – the Club for Growth, for example. Nor do I think it is traceable to 9/11 – that is tin-foil hattery. PNAC was around long before Bush was in office. However, I do think they and their members were poised to influence George W. Bush, and to take advantage of 9/11 when it occurred.
Frankly, I’ve known about the Project for a New American Century for many years. Their membership has not been a secret. I don’t think these folks are working as a secret cabal – most of them are in actual, open positions of power. They don’t need a secret organization. And by doing such things as writing President Clinton, as they did while he was President, they did not operate secretly in the past.
What makes me most uncomfortable about your post, however, is that TVnewLies.org, to which you refer, does not identify who is behind it. I went to that site, and cannot find an identifiable person or board of directors or supporters publicly posted. That, I think, makes it a less than reliable source. It is inconsistent to make claims about a organization that operates and controls in secret by referring to a web site that does not openly talk about who is speaking through that website.
Yes, DC is littered w/ right wing think tanks. Conservatives have been very successful at funding and promulgating these propaganda outlets since the early 70’s as a reaction to civil rights, women’s rights, and the Vietnam debacle.
The Club for Growth is an example of an unfettered capitalistic think tank, think Reaganomics. PNAC is an entirely different animal, think global dominion. PNAC is peopled by those whom even the Bush I Admin. referred to and derided as “the crazies.” These were the folks who wanted to finish the job and march to Baghdad in Gulf Rout 1. Bush I decided not to accept their counsel and called of the dogs by deciding that the despot you know (and created) is better than the unknown (what we have now.)
These ideologues lay in wait during the Clinton years, issuing some ridiculous “Depose Saddam Now” letters from time to time, crafting policy, writing books, editing magazines and journals, writing op-eds and syndicated columns, and teaching in academia. They had a pretty robust propaganda campaign going. They called for a return to a Wilsonian policy of spreading democracy everywhere(including by preventative force if necessary,)dramatically increased weapons spending, an increased global military footprint, the overthrow of despotic and/or terror supporting regimes, earning international respect by force, the repeal of the UN and other “worthless” international organizations, the active denial of emergence of any other superpowers in the wake of Soviet Union’s dissolution, the securing of strategic energy and mineral resources…in short total global dominion.
To characterize PNAC as a secretive cabal is indeed wholly untrue. They were always very open about their once scoffed at aims. While they rightly surmised that it would take an horrific event to galvanize the support necessary to implement their grand scheme, the fact that they stated that in advance does in no manner imply complicity in 911.
It is true, however, that the MSM does not devote and has not devoted the necessary attention IMHO to the astonishing fact that so many people that subscribe to this once radical philosophy are now sitting in seats of tremendous power. And, certainly the Iraq coverage in the MSM has not connected the dots for the American people.
The site you link to is a poor choice in my estimation as there is voluminous print reporting on this organization in what are widely held to be more credible sources.
If possible you may want to consider revising your title by adding these 2 words to your title: on MSM.
I applaud the general gist of your post. Let’s educate the public as to who these people are and what their end game is, and how we the people will be negatively affected by their excesses and misjudgment.
I don’t think PNAC and RAD are forbidden but taken for granted. And what I mean is that many of us who are aware of them do not bother to reraise these issues. Its as if we are constantly seaching sites to bring up new news (totally redundant) and fail to take a step back and attempt an analysis of the larger picture. I must say that some people do this.
Anyway, now is as good as a time as ever to reraise these issues. When some folks say “Well, how did liberals know there were no WMD’s” I say, that there is no way we could absolutely debunk all the administrations claims of intelligence, but there were plenty of other reasons to think other wise, PNAC was a key piece. As well as plenty of others Wolfowitz’s letters, Blair claiming there was no connection between Iraq and OSB, etc.
You’re not allowed to discuss it because it has neocons in it, and many are Jewish, so it is presumed to be an anti Jewish conspiracy theory, even though many are not Jewish, like Dick Cheney, Andrew Sullivan and Condoleeza Rice. Anyway it is the right wing form form of political correctness.
That reality certainly plays a role in the sparse coverage of PNAC.
In fact, when the term neoconservative came into vogue, many falsehood peddlers came out of the woodwork in places like the WhiteWash Post Op/Ed page claiming that neoconservative was code for “jew.”
That canard didn’t stick for long, but yes it had the desired effect of stifling debate on who neocons are and what they stand for…
That canard is still played out on an unmentionable blog.