Two PNACs in a pod: Why did Clinton bomb Iraq? (Clark/Dean)

[WhoCountsTheVotes]

I must have missed a memo. Didn't PNAC originally come up with their plan for Clinton? Didn't Clinton start bombing Iraq on the recommendation of PNAC? Didn't Clinton say that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction?

People are saying that Clark is "one of them" - the PNAC types. But didn't Dean support Clinton's first PNAC action, the bombing of Iraq? Doesn't Dean have PNAC people working for his campaign? Isn't Dean's campaign manager the former head of AIPAC?

How involved in Clark is PNAC? Does he support their goals of the US taking over the middle east? How many PNAC people does Clark have working for him?

The anti-Clark people have one thing right: just because Clark says something in one of his speeches, doesn't mean that's what he'll really do. Same for Dean of course.

Isn't the Democratic party 100% on board with PNAC, and always has been? The main complaint is that Bush is too incompetent to get the job done right, isn't it?

:)

[TeeYiYi]

1. Question is . . .

. . . how involved is Clinton in PNAC? I've said all along that Clark is
a ringer thrown in by PNAC and since Clinton sees Clark as a 'STAR'. . .

TYY

[wyldwolf]

2. Almost, not quite...

PNAC wanted Clinton to remove Saddam from power in 1998 - which Clinton refused to do. I recall the story, but have no link.

But I do have the letter PNAC sent to Clinton on the subject:

http://www.newamericancentury.org/iraqclintonletter.htm

And since we can plainly see Clinton didn't follow the "instructions" he was given from PNAC, I would assume he isn't a part of them.

[robbedvoter]

3. Also, Clark DENOUNCES PNAC: (like my link with bush)

I WENT BACK through the Pentagon in November 2001, and one of
the senior military staff officers had time for a chat. Yes, we were
still on track for going against Iraq, he said. But there was more. This
was being discussed as part of a five-year campaign plan, he said, and
there were a total of seven countries, beginning with Iraq, then Syria,
Lebanon, Libya, Iran, Somalia, and Sudan. So, I thought, this is what
they mean when they talk about “draining the swamp.” It was evidence of
the Cold War approach: Terrorism must have a “state sponsor,” and it
would be much more effective to attack a state than to chase after
individuals, nebulous organizations, and shadowy associations.
http://www.msnbc.com/news/969671.asp?0bl=-0

Hi

[gottaB]

6. Scratching my head

Between these statements and the reasonable criticisms posted here lateley, I can see it's going to take some time and contemplation to figure out General Clark.

Thanks for posting that, rv.

[JNelson6563]

4. No, military action against Iraq during

Clinton's administration was not part of the plan. The PNAC plan was to achieve military success in Iraq after they had seized power in their bloodless coup in 2000.

Check this out:

In his statement of September 16, 1998, Wolfowitz ridiculed Clinton’s policies toward Iraq and said, “Administration officials continue to claim, as Assistant Secretary Martin Indyk did in testimony to the Senate last week, that the only alternative to maintaining the unity of the UN Security Council is to send U.S. forces to Baghdad. This is wrong.”

Wolfowitz then articulated how, with patience and diplomacy, a critical mass could be reached by supporting dissidents in their eventual overthrow of the Ba’athist regime. “he key lies not in marching U.S. soldiers to Baghdad, but in helping the Iraqi people to liberate themselves from Saddam,” he said.

He detailed the patient commitment that such a policy would require however, such an action would deliver much stronger international support than American militarism. He said, “Our friends in the Gulf, who fear Saddam but who also fear ineffective American action against him, would see that this is a very different American policy, one that can rid them of the danger that Saddam poses. And Saddam's supporters in the Security Council–in particular France and Russia–would suddenly see a different prospect before them. Instead of lucrative oil production contracts with the Saddam Hussein regime, they would now have to calculate the economic and commercial opportunities that would come from ingratiating themselves with the future government of Iraq.”

http://www.republicons.org/view_article.asp?RP_ARTICLE_ID=717

It couples nicely with this essay IMO:

A little background is necessary: In June of 1997 a group of former republican administration officials launched The Project for the New American Century, a think tank offering research and analysis on a “revolution” in modern military methods and military objectives. Like the energy task force, the passionate neo-conservative authors endowed their Principles with hard-hitting force, calling for the necessity of “preserving and extending an international order friendly” to America’s “security, prosperity and principles.” The founders wrote: “The history of the 20th Century should have taught us that it is important to shape circumstances before crises emerge and to meet threats before they become dire.” In fact, on pages 51 and 67 of the institution’s intellectual centerpiece, Rebuilding America’s Defenses, the authors lament that the process of transforming the military would most likely be a long one, “absent some catastrophic and catalyzing event—like a new Pearl Harbor.” (How unfortunate for Americans, they got their needed event on September 11, 2001.)

The signers to the “principles” read like a who’s who of the Bush administration plus a chorus line of supporters: Dick Cheney, I. Lewis Libby, Donald Rumsfeld, Paul Wolfowitz, and Elliott Abrams, plus world famous: William Bennett, Jeb Bush, and Dan Quayle, among others.

The signers endorsed two other dynamic enabling policies: increased military spending, and the necessity of challenging “regimes hostile to America’s interests and values.”

The seventy-six-page Rebuilding America’s Defenses was published in 2000. With a lot of expositional swagger, the authors created not only the ideal military preparedness level for their goal of global domination, but they identified a new kind of warfare that requires far less “force” than the military was accustomed to accept. What’s more, they identified the “hostile regimes” mentioned in the “Principles” to be none other than Iraq, North Korea, Iran and Syria.

The report credits Thomas Donnelly, a military writer, as “principal author,” and lists twenty-seven participants, some of whom contributed a “paper” to the discussion. The list of participants includes Dick Cheney’s present chief of staff, I. Lewis Libby as well as Paul Wolfowitz.

http://www.yuricareport.com/PoliticalAnalysis/FraudinWhiteHouse.htm

I snipped that from about 1/3 of the way through. It is an excellent piece of work and I highly recommend it. I think it will help answer your questions too.

Julie

[rucky]

5. Read This Article...

...then tell me if any of your theories make sense:

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article3544.htm

Once you really get to understand PNAC, you'll see how far to the right it is. There's no way any Democrat - and many Republicans would identify with this bunch.

As for Clark, I'm taking him at face value. I see no reason to suspect anything insideous - just a few things on his record that weaken him as a great white hope.

Also, AIPAC - however dastardly they are in their own right - is not interchangable with PNAC. There is some crossover, but only to a point:

PNAC uses Israel as a tool for US dominance in the Mideast. AIPAC just wants Israel to be dominant, and sees US influence as instrumental in achieving that. Same means, different ends.

I know it's hard to trust anybody in this climate, but there are plenty of NAMED neocons in power to focus your energy on. Speculating on moles in the democratic party is counterproductive at this time.

[nolabels]

8. My theory is people that cling to these artificial borders are not too...

Smart and should reconsider what goals one might want to contemplate. The story of armies marching to other lands to colonize is quite old. The arbitrary borders drawn up by so many that once occupied the land are starting to become bogus. Another old thing is an army being told they are fighting a battle for one reason, but in actually they were put there to fight for another reason.

When places are supposedly conquered and divided up into country states this does not change the culture of the people. The billions Muslims have more in common amongst themselves than they do with Europeans or Americans. Nothing will ever be solved opening up wounds from thousands of years ago.

The last thing I noticed is one culture is never able to subdue and change another’s, they may be able to obliterate them totally (probably at great cost with many lives), but unless one finds way to live and let live, the conflict goes on.

http://www.bilderberg.org/usglobal.htm

Fascism, state terror and power abuse
A counterfeit civilisation for the world - starting in the cradle of civilisation, Iraq

The perpetual war, to end all peace

- Illegal US/UK state terrorists are dishing out licenced terror alongside CIA trained fanatics - fuelling anti-Western hatred round the world. The objective appears to be create a global crisis (and massive military spending) to rescue Western economies and bounce us all into a US/UN controlled New World Order.
War is terrorism with a bigger budget

Documents like those of the New American Century people and Z Brezinski's book 'The Grand Chessboard' explain the plan which includes information warfare.

But does the end justify the means?

As the extraordinary events unfold in this 'war on terrorism' I present an alternative chronology. Here you will find well researched, often mainstream press articles, which show another side to events, namely that a US corporate led fascist system of global control is being imposed all over the world.
Previous War on Terrorism page covering the period 16 February 2001 to 7th March 2003

'And ye shall hear of wars and rumours of wars: see that ye be not troubled: for all these things must come to pass, but the end is not yet' Matthew 24:6
(snip)

Lots of links and fun for people who think that a lot of other people are lying won't admit it.

[IkeWarnedUs]

9. Moles in the Democratic Party

PNAC's influence on the Democratic Party is achieved through the DLC. There are a number of Democrats and other DLC folk who have signed on with PNAC.

Will Marshall, the president and founder of the Progressive Policy Institute (PPI) and former Policy Director for the DLC is a signer on PNAC's two statements on Iraq. PPI was created to set policy for the DLC and is very closely connected to the DLC.

Tod Lindberg, published by The Blueprint (DLC magazine) also signed both PNAC Iraq statements, as did James Steinberg, Deputy National Security Advisor to President Clinton.

Marshall Wittman, another Blueprint author, is a Senior Fellow at the Hudson Institute (Richard Perle, trustee) and former aid to Ralph Reed.

Each of the PNAC statements were signed by 20-30 people - a select group.

The neo-cons have been putting their cabal together for many, many years and they have covered a lot of bases. They developed unholy alliances in the media, military, foreign governments, corporate world and have taken the Republican party to a place many traditional Republicans find uncomfortable. And, through the DLC, have infiltrated the Democratic party as well.

There is another group, The Committee for the Liberation of Iraq (CLI) that was formed in the fall of 2002. Its Mission Statement says:

"The regime of Saddam Hussein has attacked its neighbors, acquired weapons of mass destruction, and directed those weapons against innocent men, women, and children. It has supported international terrorism and has savagely murdered and repressed the Iraqi people. The current government of Iraq poses a clear and present danger to its neighbors, to the United States, and to free peoples throughout the world."

Where have we heard that before?

It says they "will engage in educational and advocacy efforts" in support of liberating the Iraqi people.

Translation: it serves as another "authority" to support the PNAC agenda.

Who are The Committee for the Liberation of Iraq?

CLI Officers

Chairman of the Board Bruce P. Jackson

Executive Director Randy Scheunemann

Treasurer Julie Finley

Secretary Gary Schmitt

(Jackson, Scheunemann and Schmitt all signed the PNAC Statements on Iraq. Schmitt is also a founder of PNAC.)

Advisors include PNAC'ers Dr. Eliot Cohen, Robert Kagan, Peter Galbraith, William Kristol, Will Marshall, Josh Muravchik, Richard Perle, Danielle Pletka and James Woolsey. All were part of the select few who put their names to one or more of the PNAC statements above.

Note, Will Marshall, policy director of the DLC, is an advisor to CLI.

(Link to CLI website: http://209.50.252.70/index.shtml)

Finally, take a look at what the Blueprint (the DLC magazine) had to say right after 9/11.

America s New Mission
By Will Marshall The Blueprint Magazine 11/15/01

http://www.ndol.org/ndol_ci.cfm?&kaid=124&subid=307&contentid=3916


The Case Against Saddam
By Khidir Hamza The Blueprint Magazine 11/15/01

http://www.ndol.org/ndol_ci.cfm?&kaid=124&subid=307&contentid=3926


And this one from well before the 9/11 attacks:

Why it's Time to Revolutionize the Military
By James R. Blaker and Steven J. Nider The Blueprint Magazine 2/17/01

http://www.ndol.org/ndol_ci.cfm?kaid=124&subid=159&contentid=2980


The Blueprint speaks and you can hardly see Perle's lips move.

I'm sure many of the New Democrats (what DLC members are called) joined on for funding support and without really understanding what the DLC's agenda really is. Most of the DLC's message is spun to sound like it challenges Bush, but look at the core messages and you find them more closely alligned with the neo-cons than it appears on the surface.

I think Al Gore realized how closely the DLC was connected to PNAC and decided he would rather drop out of the presidential race than allign himself with the DLC anymore.

When you realize this, Congressional Democratic support for the Bush administration's policies (out of control military budget, tax cuts and war, war, war) makes more sense.

On edit: btw, Dean is no longer a member of the New Democrats, while Edwards, Graham, Kerry, Gephardt and Lieberman are. (Kucinich never was.)

Membership list here: http://www.ndol.org/new_dem_dir_action.cfm?viewAll=1

[WhoCountsTheVotes]

10. No, Gephardt is NOT a member

He was an early member but dropped out, or was kicked out, because he was "too liberal".

As far as I know, the ONLY reason Dean is no longer a member is because he is no longer in office. He didn't quite while he was in office.

[IkeWarnedUs]

11. Gephardt is on the roster

Check the link. It is a current list of New Democrats on the DLC website.

I'm not sure when Dean dropped out - it may be when he left office. I copied the list in May to my hard drive and he wasn't on it then. I have written and called the Dean camp with the info above, asking them to ask Dean to formally denounce the DLC, but I'm not sure how far my messages get.

As I said, I don't think most of the New Democrats are aware of these ties, but read what The Blueprint has had to say. They are getting the PNAC message, delivered as if it was the DLC's original ideas. And look at the way Democrats have been voting and supporting Bush - especially Gephardt (remember the Rose Garden).

[WhoCountsTheVotes]

13. okay, I guess he IS still a member

I know he was a founder, but I keep reading here he's considered "too liberal" for the DLC, especially since he led the fight against the uber-DLC creation, NAFTA, and is no fan of their economic policies.

In fact, the DLC keeps attacking Gephardt's health care plan:

www.evote.com/news_section/2003-05/05152003DLC.asp
www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,86997,00.html

Here's an interesting comment:
http://www.cavness.org/cogicophony/archives/000086.php

"If the DLC doesn’t lay off Howard Dean and other candidates in order to sing the praises of its power-boy, Joseph Lieberman, I’m going to vote for Dean just to spite them.

Really, within the last couple weeks, the DLC has become more and more shrill in its denunciation of what it calls a drift from the political center. Correct me if I’m wrong, but Kucinich, Moseley-Braun, and Sharpton are all running in the single digits and really in no danger of winning any primary, or finishing anywhere other than last. Of the others, John Edwards is a DLC friend, Dean is a DLC friend if they’d shut up and look at his record for a second, Graham is a DLC friend, Kerry is everybody’s friend, and Gephardt…well, okay. So Gephardt’s the one strong-ish leftist candidate.

But nobody’s going to vote for Gephardt other than Iowa, so get over it, Al From."

In any case, Dean is closer to the DLC in terms of domestic and economic policy than Gephardt is.

[nolabels]

14. Yikes?, not really, not if you spent enough time on DU ferreting this....

stuff out. I keep saying these people are criminals and traitors to the people of this country. Somehow from somewhere a naïveté breaks in like all of those things can be patched up, somehow.

It's not going to work.

There are many of these people that have long ago abandoned their duty for which they volunteered or ascribed to, for mere greed and imagined glory. I don't subscribe to these fatalist ideals but I do know there are many forces that man has never measured or seen, unless it was just a glimpse.

Either way I am not worried about what will transpire but I would like to point this one article from your links. I think it really should give one pause for people that would care to impinge their particular brand of religion or cult on the rest of us.

http://www.ndol.org/ndol_ci.cfm?&kaid=124&subid=307&contentid=3916

DLC | Blueprint Magazine | November 15, 2001
America's New Mission
By Will Marshall
(snip)
The United States has no choice but to wage total war on terror; self-defense and self-respect demand it. But the moment demands something more: the vigorous exercise of American power to buttress the global community of liberal democracies and to extend the fruits of modernity -- economic opportunity, individual freedom, respect for human rights -- to the world's breeding grounds of discontent and terror.

During the 1990s, as public interest in world affairs reached an ebb, foreign policy experts who agreed on little else had no trouble identifying the main threats to the "new world order." Four dangers kept cropping up, like new horsemen of the apocalypse: rogue or failed states that don't play by civilized rules of behavior; state-sponsored terrorism with increasingly global reach; the spread of mass destruction weapons (nuclear, chemical, and biological); and the flare-up of ethnic and communal violence from the Balkans to Rwanda and Chiapas to Kashmir.

All of these threats manifested themselves on Sept. 11. The massacre was likely conceived in a rogue state (Afghanistan); it involved a global network of terrorists spread out over as many as 60 countries; it revealed their interest in using crop-dusters to spray U.S. cities with biological toxins; and it grew out of Osama bin Laden's hateful call for a holy war between Muslims and "infidels."

What's needed now is not just a war on terror, but a broad struggle against all of these forces of global disintegration and disorder. It will be a new kind of war against a new kind of enemy. Instead of clashing armies, it will feature surgical strikes on tiny terrorist cells and suspected weapons labs. Instead of a stable front, we will fight on a constantly shifting "battlefield" that could be anywhere in the world -- even in our own communities. Success will be measured not in body counts and ground gained, but in networks penetrated, communications intercepted, bank transfers blocked, and secret weapons programs uncovered and stopped. It will be a war in which intelligence and surveillance, deft multilateral diplomacy, and heightened vigilance on the home front will matter as much as military prowess.
(snip)

For balance or another side of the box

http://www.monthlyreview.org/0202mahajan.htm
(snip)

New Crusade: The U.S. War
on Terrorism
by Rahul Mahajan
This essay was written for Rahul Mahajan’s new book, The New Crusade: America’s War on Terrorism scheduled for publication in March 2002, by Monthly Review Press.
(snip)
The attack was like Pearl Harbor, and therefore, as in the Second World War, we had to declare war or risk destruction. The truth is that Pearl Harbor was an attack by a powerful, expansionist state that had the capacity to subjugate all of East Asia. The attacks of September 11 were committed by nineteen men, part of a series of networks that has a few thousand hard-core militants, with access to modest financial resources. Since they were hardly an immediate, all-encompassing threat, options other than war could have been explored.

This was an attack on freedom. Whatever considerations exist in the mind of Osama bin Laden or members of his network, his recently broadcast statements contain no mention of any resentment of American democracy, freedom, or the role of women. They mention specific grievances regarding U.S. policy in the Middle East: the sanctions on Iraq, maintained largely by the United States, which have killed over one million civilians; material and political support for Israel’s military occupation of Palestine and its frequent military attacks, carried out with American weapons, on practically unarmed Palestinians; and U.S. military occupation of the Gulf and support for corrupt regimes that serve the interests of U.S. corporations before those of the people. The terrorists’ own vision for the states of the Middle East is, if imaginable, even more horrific than the current reality, and would presumably involve even greater limits on freedom than are already in place. Their recruiting points, however, the issues that make them potentially relevant as a political force, have to do with U.S. domination of the region, not with the internal organization of American society.

You’re with us or you’re with the terrorists. This polarization, foisted on the world to frighten possible dissenters from America’s course of action, is the logic of tyranny, even of extermination. Anti-war protesters who condemn the terrorist attacks of September 11 along with the criminal acts of the United States in Afghanistan, and countries that do the same, don’t fit into this scheme, and certainly don’t deserve to be tarred with the same brush as the terrorists.

The war on Afghanistan was self-defense. In fact, people in Afghanistan at the time of the attack had no way of menacing the United States from afar since they have no ICBMs or long-range bombers. Someone in Afghanistan intending to attack the United States had to get there first. If there was an imminent threat, it was from terrorists already in the United States or in Europe. Thus, there was enough time to seek Security Council authorization, which is required unless one is attacking the source of an imminent threat. Instead, the U.S. deliberately chose not to seek it. The four weeks between the attack and the war that passed virtually without incident are proof that there was no immediate, overwhelming need for military action, a fundamental requirement of any claim to act in self-defense.
(snip)

[Flying_Pig]

12. Rucky, you wrote:

"Also, AIPAC - however dastardly they are in their own right - is not interchangable with PNAC. There is some crossover, but only to a point:

PNAC uses Israel as a tool for US dominance in the Mideast. AIPAC just wants Israel to be dominant, and sees US influence as instrumental in achieving that. Same means, different ends."

I disagree. They are using each other. PNAC is involved with AIPAC, the JDL, JINSA, and other pro-Israeli groups, by virtue of their mutual support of and for Likud, and Likud's goals for Israel and the ME. They are in bed together, so how do you divorce the two? This is very important to understand, because the membership of some of these groups, are knowingly, and unknowingly, supporting PNAC!

This is why it is important for Dems like myself, to know from who and where our candidates are deriving their support. If AIPAC/JINSA/JDL are supporting Likud, and PNAC is supporting Likud, then any politician that supports AIPAC, or rather, gets support from them, is in fact supporting PNAC!

Many Democrats (including Pelosi, Schumer, Berman, Kerry, Lieberman, Feinstein, and dozens of others) work hard for AIPAC support. This is why many of them voted for the Iraq war, because of the pressure AIPAC put on them. But what they did, at the same time, is support PNAC's goals for world domination. It's a stinking mess, but I will not support anyone sleeping with PNAC directly, or indirectly.

I want my presidential candidate to recognize the fact, that all of these groups are tied together, by virtue of Likud, PNAC, and their plans for the ME.

[HFishbine]

7. Nowhere fast

Dems will get nowhere fast pretending that parts of the right wing agenda are really aligned with democratic (big "D" and little "d") interersts.

Whether dissembling about a vote for the war, explaining away a vote for the Patriot Act or trying to excuse supporting CAPPS II, dems lose when they try to diminish the significance of the right wing agenda.