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Obviousman Donating Member (927 posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Fri Nov-12-04 06:09 PM
Original message
Any info on PNAC?
I saw this post http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=104x2682009 and I'd like more information on PNAC. I only have a vague understanding of it.
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Stephanie Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Fri Nov-12-04 06:11 PM
Response to Original message
1. Here > > >
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Obviousman Donating Member (927 posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Fri Nov-12-04 06:15 PM
Response to Reply #1
5. thanks, this is horrifying
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Stephanie Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Fri Nov-12-04 06:19 PM
Response to Reply #5
6. Welcome to our world
Get ready for the 50 Years War.

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troubleinwinter Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Fri Nov-12-04 06:12 PM
Response to Original message
2. Google PNAC
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HereSince1628 Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Fri Nov-12-04 06:12 PM
Response to Original message
3. Search the DU archives...lots of good research
has been done by DU'ers.

Of course the NeoCons believe in hiding everything out in the open, so a visit to the PNAC website will be revealling.
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T Roosevelt Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Fri Nov-12-04 06:14 PM
Response to Original message
4. Recommend Stephanie's thread
not much need to look any further, though somewhere in DU is a thread on Leo Strauss...
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bigtree Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Fri Nov-12-04 06:32 PM
Response to Original message
7. here's my two pennies from my book
In September 2000, the PNAC drafted a report entitled "Rebuilding America's Defenses: Strategy, Forces and Resources for a New Century." http://www.newamericancentury.org/RebuildingAmericasDefenses.pdf

The conservative foundation- funded report was authored by Bill Kristol, Bruce Jackson, Gary Schmitt, John Bolton and others. Bolton, now Under Secretary of State for Arms Control and International Security, was Senior Vice President of the conservative American Enterprise Institute.

The report called for: ". . . significant, separate allocation of forces and budgetary resources over the next two decades for missile defense," and claimed that despite the "residue of investments first made in the mid- and late 1980s, over the past decade, the pace of innovation within the Pentagon had slowed measurably." Also that, "without the driving challenge of the Soviet military threat, efforts at innovation had lacked urgency."

The PNAC report asserted that "while long-range precision strikes will certainly play an increasingly large role in U.S. military operations, American forces must remain deployed abroad, in large numbers for decades and that U.S. forces will continue to operate many, if not most, of today's weapons systems for a decade or more."

The PNAC document encouraged the military to "develop and deploy global missile defenses to defend the American homeland and American allies, and to provide a secure basis for U.S. power projection around the world."

You can hear the pitch of former Lockheed executive Bruce Jackson, hawking in favor of his company's space weaponry:
-Control the new ‘International commons' of space and cyberspace, and pave the way for the creation of a new military service with the mission of space control. (U.S. Space Forces; eventually realized in the form of the Air Force-financed Lockheed Space Battle Lab) http://www.spacedaily.com/news/milspace-03z.html

-Exploit the "revolution" in military space affairs to insure the long-term superiority of U.S. conventional forces.
-Establish a two-stage transformation process which maximizes the value of current weapons systems through the application of advanced technologies.

The paper claimed that, "Potential rivals such as China were anxious to exploit these technologies broadly, while adversaries like Iran, Iraq and North Korea were rushing to develop ballistic missiles and nuclear weapons as a deterrent to American intervention in regions they sought to dominate. Also that, information and other new technologies – as well as widespread technological and weapons proliferation – were creating a ‘dynamic' that might threaten America's ability to exercise its ‘dominant' military power."

The Chinese would dispute the PNAC assertion that they pose a threat to the U.S.; as far as I know, there is still a normalization of relations between our two countries. Perhaps they are alluding to the transfer of weapon's technology between nations; or the threat to Taiwan. In any case, the conservative document's allusion to U.S. "dominant military power" sounds a lot like destabilization to me.

Between peaceful nations, parity and balance of our respective forces and weaponry is the maxim in our expressions of our defense and security goals. Any open declaration of the need for military dominance is an invitation to a dangerously competitive, world-wide arms race.

In reference to the nation's nuclear forces, the PNAC document asserted that, " reconfiguring its nuclear force, the United States also must counteract the effects of the proliferation of ballistic missiles and weapons of mass destruction that may soon allow lesser states to deter U.S. military action by threatening U.S. allies and the American homeland itself."

"The (Clinton) administration's stewardship of the nation's deterrent capability has been described by Congress as "erosion by design," the group chided.

The authors further warned that, "U.S. nuclear force planning and related arms control policies must take account of a larger set of variables than in the past, including the growing number of small nuclear arsenals –from North Korea to Pakistan to, perhaps soon, Iran and Iraq – and a modernized and expanded Chinese nuclear force."

In addition, they counseled, "there may be a need to develop a new family of nuclear weapons designed to address new sets of military requirements, such as would be required in targeting the very deep underground, hardened bunkers that are being built by many of our potential adversaries."

The 2002 PNAC document is a mirrored synopsis of the Bush administration's foreign policy today. President Bush is projecting a domineering image of the United States around the world which has provoked lesser equipped countries to desperate, unconventional defenses; or resigned them to a humiliating surrender to our rape of their lands, their resources and their communities.

President Bush intends for there to be more conquest - like in Iraq - as the United States exercises its military force around the world; our mandate, our justification, presumably inherent in the mere possession of our instruments of destruction.

Our folly is evident in the rejection of our ambitions by even the closest of our allies, as we reject all entreaties to moderate our manufactured mandate to conquer. Isolation is enveloping our nation like the warming of the atmosphere and the creeping melt of our planet's ancient glaciers.

We are unleashing a new, unnecessary fear between the nations of the world as we dissolve decades of firm understandings about an America power which was to be guileless in its unassailable defenses. The falseness of our diplomacy is revealed in our scramble for ‘useable', tactical nuclear missiles, new weapons systems, and our new justifications for their use.

The PNAC ‘Rebuilding America' report was used after the Sept. 11th terrorist attacks to draft the 2002 document entitled "The National Security Strategy of the United States," which for the first time in the nation's history advocated "preemptive" attacks to prevent the emergence of opponents the administration considered a threat to its political and economic interests. http://www.whitehouse.gov/nsc/nss.html

It states that ". . . we will not hesitate to act alone, if necessary, to exercise our right of self-defense by acting preemptively against such terrorists, to prevent them from doing harm against our people and our country." And that, "To forestall or prevent such hostile acts by our adversaries, the United States will, if necessary, act preemptively."

This military industry band of executives promoted the view, in and outside of the White House that, " must be prepared to stop rogue states and their terrorist clients before they are able to threaten or use weapons of mass destruction against the United States and our allies and friends. . . We must deter and defend against the threat before it is unleashed."

‘Peace through strength; big kid on the block,' is a posture which is more appropriately used to counter threats by nations; not threats by rouge individuals with no known base of operations.

Their strategy asserts that "The United States has long maintained the option of preemptive actions to counter a sufficient threat to our national security. The greater the threat, the greater is the risk of inaction - and the more compelling the case for taking anticipatory action to defend ourselves, even if uncertainty remains as to the time and place of the enemy's attack."

So their plan is to attack whomever, whenever they feel our security is threatened, no matter if the nature and prevalence of the attack is uncertain. The U.N. should have studied this document before it wasted its time trying to reign President Bush in.


http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0974735205/002-0073119-5222456?v=glance&s=books
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