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June 11, 2008 at 10:17:25

Headlined on 6/11/08:
A Failed Project for the New American Century?

by Tim Buchholz     Page 1 of 2 page(s)

www.opednews.com

 
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A Failed Project for the New American Century?
By Tim Buchholz

It was early morning (for me) when my roommate got a call from his mother in Wisconsin telling him to turn on the TV. That's when we saw the first building on fire. We ran to our roof in Brooklyn that overlooked Manhattan and saw the plumes of smoke filling the air, and that's when we saw the second plane hit. We were in shock; we couldn't believe what we just saw. We thought the world was ending.


As soon as the trains were running again, my friend and I went in to the city and got off at Union Square/14th Street, where anything below 14th was blocked off. Makeshift hospitals lined the streets as gurney's rushed past us with bleeding bodies through the smoke clouded air.

"How could this have happened?" we asked ourselves as a soldier motioned with his machine gun that we could not go any further.

I'm sure we all have stories of where we were on 9/11; even those numbers will never be the same to us again. And there are just as many theories as to why it happened, and who is to blame. I'm not going to try to answer those questions, but 9/11 did set into motion a military plan that seemed to have been waiting for it to happen.

In 1997, many of the names we have seen so often since the War in Iraq began were listed as members of a neoconservative think tank called "Project for a New American Century," or PNAC. Founded by William Kristol (not the comedian) and Robert Kagan, its stated goal according to Wikipedia was "to promote American global leadership. Fundamental to the PNAC are the views that American leadership is both good for America and good for the world and support for a Reaganite policy of military strength and moral clarity." And their Statement of Principle ends with, "While such a Reaganite policy of military strength and moral clarity may not be fashionable today, it is necessary if the United States is to build on the successes of this past century and to ensure our security and our greatness in the next." They felt that America was the most powerful country in the world and it was their duty to keep it that way, protecting the world while serving the interests of the United States.

PNAC called for an increase in military spending, and a redeployment of our troops oversees to meet modern needs.

In January 1998, in a letter to Bill Clinton, written in part by Donald Rumsfeld and Paul Wolfowitz, PNAC called for the US Military to remove Saddam Hussein from power, and later criticized the December 1998 bombing attempts the Clinton Administration had made in Iraq, calling them ineffective. But PNAC was about to get a stronger voice in Washington.
George W. Bush was elected in 2000, and his Vice President (Dick Cheney), the VP's Chief of Staff (I. Lewis Scootter Libby), Secretary of Defense (Donald Rumsfeld), Deputy Secretary of Defense (Paul Wolfowitz), Deputy Secretary of State (Richard Armitage), and his appointed Ambassador to the UN (John R. Bolton) were all members of PNAC, as well as many members of his cabinet and his brother Jeb, who was Governor of Florida during the recount that made him president.

PNAC published a 90 page report entitled "Rebuilding America's Defenses: Strategies, Forces, and Resources for a New Century" which explains exactly how they planned to implement their program, and also states, "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." They knew the American people wouldn't go for the plan without a major catastrophe, and they were about to get it.

But let's backtrack just a bit.

Dick Cheney had been Secretary of Defense under George Bush Sr., and as we all know moved on to Halliburton after Bush Sr.'s presidency. During the Clinton Administration, the stock value for Halliburton dropped significantly, and they were rumored to be doing business through their subsidiary businesses with Iran, even though sanctions forbid such dealings. George Jr. asked Cheney to help him pick a VP for his presidential run, and Cheney suggested … Cheney.

Once elected, Bush put Cheney in charge of a national energy policy team called "National Energy Policy Development Group (NEPDG)." According to www.halliburtonwatch.org, Cheney's group "met secretly with lobbyists and representatives of the petroleum, coal, nuclear, natural gas, and electricity industries. Many of these individuals work for energy companies which gave large campaign contributions to Bush/Cheney 2000. Environmental groups were mostly excluded from the task force."

Congress asked Cheney to release the information from these meetings, and he declined. Judicial Watch sued under "The Freedom of Information Act" to make these reports public, and finally managed to get some released in July 2003. According to www.halliburtonwatch.org, "Those documents include maps of Iraqi and other mid-east oilfields, pipelines, refineries and terminals, two charts detailing various Iraqi oil and gas projects, and a March 2001 list of "Foreign Suitors for Iraqi Oilfield Contracts." They also sate that, "In January 2003, The Wall Street Journal reported that representatives from Halliburton, Exxon Mobil Corp., Chevron-Texaco Corp. and Conoco-Phillips, among others, had met with Vice President Cheney's staff to plan the post-war revival of Iraq's oil industry. However, both Cheney and the companies deny the meeting took place." The War didn't begin until March 2003, but we already had maps showing who would get Iraq's Oil Fields when the war was over, drawn up in meetings held between January and May, 2001.

According to "Crossing the Rubicon - Simplifying the case against Dick Cheney" by Michael Kane, "On May 8, 2001 - four months prior to 9/11 - the president placed Dick Cheney in charge of all federal programs dealing with weapons of mass destruction consequence management within the Departments of Defense, Health and Human Services, Justice, and Energy, the Environmental Protection Agency, and other federal agencies… This included all training and planning which needed to be seamlessly integrated, harmonious and comprehensive in order to maximize effectiveness. This mandate created the Office of National Preparedness in FEMA, overseen by Dick Cheney."

Michael Kane goes on to say that Cheney and the Secret Service were running War Games on 9/11, "that placed 'false blips' on FAA radar screens. These war games eerily mirrored the real events of 9/11 to the point of the Air Force running drills involving hijacked aircraft as the 9/11 plot actually unfolded. The war games & terror drills played a critical role in ensuring no Air Force fighter jocks - who had trained their entire lives for this moment - would be able to prevent the attacks from succeeding. These exercises were under Dick Cheney's management."

As the planes hit, Dick Cheney was rushed to a secret bunker/command center, while George W. Bush read to school children. Who was really in charge that day? And was this the new "Pearl Harbor" that PNAC had said it would take to implement their plans?

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Tim Buchholz is a writer, musician, and activist living in Ohio. He can also be seen in the Japanese Comic series, "Recommend Mixed Marriage," and "The Secrets of Mixed Marriage," which are drawn and written by his wife, Nanae Konno.

 

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7 comments

Stanimal is a concerned citizen of planet Earth, wanting to promote fairness and harmony with fellow inhabitants.
StanimalStanimal is a concerned citizen of planet Earth, wanting to promote fairness and harmony with fellow inhabitants.

I enjoyed your article

and if you go to my most recent one in dairies "Sacrifice and the War Of Terror" you will see that I mentioned many of the same issues you described in yours.

by Stanimal (0 articles, 0 quicklinks, 12 diaries, 409 comments) on Wednesday, June 11, 2008 at 2:45:58 PM
 


I am a 64 year old registered nurse, retired after 34 years of federal service.
William BurgessI am a 64 year old registered nurse, retired after 34 years of federal service.

PNAC WATERS RUN DEEP

I was very pleased that someone has revisited the PNAC.  The American people need to know who the PNAC members were and how many of them wound up in the Bush administration.  Some like Wolfowitz, Rumsfeld and Cheney have been around a long time and the country was fortunate that there had always been a leader who stymied their ambitions..until now.   It is clear from the letter this group wrote to President Clinton in 1998 that they wanted to convince the world of America's might by overthrowing Saddam Hussein and then working our way through the Middle East.  Wolfowitz along with Richard Pearle was introduced to U.S. politics by pro Israel Senator Henry (Scoops) Jackson. Douglas Feith who worked for Wolfowitz collaborated with Pearle and others to provide Benjamin Netanyahu with a plan to make Israel the hegemon in the Middle East.  Their plan called the "Clean Break" makes for interesting reading.  When comparing the events occurring in Iraq, Iran and Syria it is easy to determine that there is a combined effort of the pro Israeli neocons and the Likud party Israelis to take control of the Middle East.  Two former members of AIPAC are awaiting trial dates for stealing sensitive information on Iran (spying) from the Pentagon with the help of Douglas Feith and giving that information to Israel.  And does anyone beside me find it interesting that Senator Joe Lieberman who has duel Israeli and American citizenship is supporting the war in Iraq, the impending war in Iran and John McCain for president?

by William Burgess (0 articles, 0 quicklinks, 0 diaries, 2 comments) on Wednesday, June 11, 2008 at 8:21:29 PM
 


I am who I am.
D WI am who I am.

The Stakes are High

I agree with many of your points, however, I have a different point of view regarding the events taking place in the Middle East as engineered by the neo-con PNAC members of the Bush "administration".

First off, the official PNAC website has been taken down, and has been offline for a few weeks now. This raises several interesting questions.

Second. I believe that Iraq was just a stepping-stone. I think the real goal all along has been Iran. Here is why:

After 9/11 happened, the United States was offered several reasons to respond the way it did, especially toward Iraq. Many of the reasons and goals of this response you outlined in your article were obviously because of increased military expenditure, securing through force America's energy interests in the Middle East, and not allowing an affront to American global dominance to go unchecked and unanswered.

However, I believe the lynchpin for this has been Israel, of which many of the PNAC founders and signatories have strong ties to.

In the 1990's, America and Israel knew that Iran was making deals with Russia to provide for the building of Iranian nuclear reactors. It was just a matter of time before a second Middle Eastern country would be able to attain a nuclear weapon capacity. This would certainly not do at all for Israel, nor the Sunni kingdom of Saudi Arabia, if Shiite Iran were able to assert itself regionally as the dominant power. America, Israel and Saudi Arabia all knew that America's former ally, now turned rogue Saddam Hussein, was in no position to counter this growing threat, having been held under the thumb of the U.S. and U.K. for a decade. Saddam's ability to act as a buffer to Iran was quickly ending. Therefore, he had to be removed. Members of the PNAC realized, I'm quite sure, that the United States would have to directly insert itself into a dominant position in Iraq to counter the threat which a nuclear Iran could ultimately pose.

After 9/11, whether or not it was manufactured as a "false flag" attack or was purposely allowed to happen, the members of the PNAC and the Bush "administration" immediately realized the possibility that these ideas and goals and plans could suddenly come to fruition.

The stakes are high. These are the next possible scenarios:

1. If Israel were to unilaterally bomb Iran, they could not do so without the United States strategic and tactical help. If Iran were to respond (which I'm sure they would) by firing its Shahab missiles with a 2000km range at Israel, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Kuwait or Iraq, the United States would be obligated to respond in kind with immediate bombing of Iranian cities and military sites.

2. The United States could unilaterally strike at Revolutionary Guard or Qud's Force camps inside Iran, claiming that they are supplying insurgents in Iraq with weapons to kill Americans, despite the fact that the U.S. supplied and funded Iraq in its proxy war against Iran during the 1980's. This apparent blatant hypocrisy does not matter in the slightest to America's leaders. U.S. dominance cannot be challenged, period.

3. A major incident in the Straight of Hormuz, similar to what happened recently between U.S. warships and Iranian gunboats, and the capturing of U.K. naval personnel.

4. A "false flag" terrorist attack on America, created and manufactured by members of the Bush "administration", and blamed on Iran or Hezbollah. This would likely take the form of either: A) a low-yield nuclear bomb detonating in an already degraded city with a port, such as New Orleans, or B) a biological or chemical attack. This would again create a post-9/11 atmosphere of terror in the U.S. which would help the Republicans and McCain in the coming election for the White House. It would also give Bush and Cheney the outright ability to declare martial law and suspend the election, giving Bush total authority for an undetermined amount of time.

Regardless of whichever way war is instigated, Russia and China would quickly become involved, as they would not stand idly by while a major energy ally of theirs is attacked. Without immediate diplomacy, the chances of a limited, or potentially total nuclear war breaking out would quickly escalate. The stakes are definitely high.

These are my thoughts and opinions. Thank you for your time.

by D W (0 articles, 0 quicklinks, 0 diaries, 34 comments) on Thursday, June 12, 2008 at 5:40:28 AM
 


Have submitted work to OpEdNews and others. Administer the website NotSee America and am writing a book on the take-over of America.
Dennis KaiserHave submitted work to OpEdNews and others. Administer the website NotSee America and am writing a book on the take-over of America.

No, They Have Been Quite Successful

Version:1.0 StartHTML:0000000168 EndHTML:0000002548 StartFragment:0000000489 EndFragment:0000002531

A good article, but I do not believe the PNAC has completed their quest for world dominance and are not through. A main threat comes in the form of Barrack Obama whom they do not yet have under their wing. Their hope was to have a presidential campaign pitting McCain and Clinton, two whom they knew would continue their agenda. This leaves them with two options; (1) have their corporate media propagandists do their job on Obama, as they did with Gore, Kerry, and a host of others who may have been a threat to their agenda; or, if these lapdogs fail in assuring a McCain victory (2) have their corporate vote counters do their thing for a third time, thus putting McCain in the White House. A third option is the “national emergency” card where Bush can take over complete control, thus invoking martial law, suspending the election, and simply taking over.


These PNAC maniacs, using the same strategies as those followed by the German Fascists of the 1930's and 40's: a triggering event (Reichstag Fire/Mass Murders of 9/11); illegal invasions (Poland/Afghanistan, Iraq, and..); concentration camps (Several/Guantanamo and others, some have yet to be used); and others too numerous to mention in this short piece. Another key operation employed by these modern day maniacs is that of the free trade agreement. These “agreements” incorporate laws, written by corporations, favoring corporations, and enforced by corporations into countries, superseding the sovereignty of that country. It is through these instruments Fascism is taking over the world. It is creating a world which is controlled by a handful of power elite.


The PNAC has not gone away, they have just slipped under rocks and in holes. Rats do most of their destruction when not observed. By the way, where has Cheney been lately?   

by Dennis Kaiser (12 articles, 0 quicklinks, 5 diaries, 205 comments) on Thursday, June 12, 2008 at 6:52:35 AM
 

 

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