A Piece of the Libby Puzzle You Missed ("Heads Up" to Hardball)

[LunaC]

Dear Hardball:

I appreciate the extensive coverage you've given the Plame leak and Libby indictment.

However, there is an aspect to Libby's background that deserves further scrutiny since it explains how and why we've come to this historic moment in time. I urge you to carefully consider the link below since it offers context and perspective to current events and connects the remaining dots to the Big Picture that may not have been immediately obvious.

PNAC 101 - Rise of the Neocons
http://demopedia.democraticunderground.com/index.php/PNAC_101

Recent excerps from various media sources follow so you can fully appreciate the validity and pertinence of the PNAC aspect to the story.
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“In 1992, Libby and former Pentagon deputy Paul Wolfowitz wrote a paper favoring the use of pre-emptive force to prevent countries from developing weapons of mass destruction. The paper later won praise from the neoconservative Project for the New American Century, which called it "a blueprint for maintaining U.S. pre-eminence, precluding the rise of a great power rival."

Prosecutor, White House at Odds Over Libby - http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20051030/ap_on_go_pr_wh/cia_leak_reconstruction
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“Throughout the 1990s Libby -- along with Wolfowitz, Feith, Cheney, Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld, and a slew of other leading defense and foreign policy officials -- clamored to finish the job they failed to complete in the 1991 Persian Gulf War: removing Saddam Hussein as the first step to installing Western-style democracy throughout the Middle East.

“In the late 1990s, Libby was among those associated with the Project for a New American Century, a think tank that publicly urged President Clinton to use military force to remove Hussein from power.

Indictments put focus on neoconservatives - http://www.boston.com/news/nation/washington/articles/2005/10/29/indictments_put_focus_on_neoconservatives/
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I. LEWIS "SCOOTER' LIBBY JR.

Founding member of the Project for a New American Century with Paul Wolfowitz, Dick Cheney, Jeb Bush and others, 1997.

http://www.sptimes.com/2005/10/29/Worldandnation/Libby__A_private_man_.shtml
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“The leader of the team was Libby, Cheney's chief of staff. Libby had studied at Yale with Paul Wolfowitz, who brought him to Washington. He co-authored a hawkish policy document with Wolfowitz in the Department of Defense for its head, Dick Cheney, after the Gulf War in 1992. When it was leaked, it embarrassed the first President Bush. Libby was a founding member of the Project for a New American Century in 1997 during the Clinton years, when many neoconservatives were out of office. The PNAC attempted to use the Republican-dominated Congress to pressure Clinton to take a more belligerent stance toward Iraq, and it advocated significantly expanding military spending and using U.S. troops as "gendarmes" in the aftermath of wars to "shape" the international security environment.

All the vice president's men
http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2005/10/28/vice_president/index_np.html
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“Makiya's work provided ammunition for the neoconservatives who were seeking a role for the United States (and for themselves) after the Cold War. Robert Kagan was one of this group, William Kristol another, Paul Wolfowitz and Richard Perle two more. The glue of the group was a belief that the United States must exploit its enhanced, post-Soviet hegemony to refashion the politics of the planet in a democratic mold. Under the banner of the Project for a New American Century, they published an open letter to President Clinton in 1998 calling for regime change in Iraq.”

'We're an empire' -
http://www.boston.com/ae/books/articles/2005/10/30/were_an_empire/
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“The fifteen-month PR blitz conducted by the White House was a massive fraud designed to trick the public into accepting a goal that Bush's advisers had held even before the election. A strategy document Dick Cheney commissioned from the Project for a New American CenturySeptember 2000, for example, asserts that "the need for a substantial American force presence in the Gulf transcends the issue of the regime of Saddam Hussein." But, as the document reflects, the Administration hawks knew the public would not agree to an attack against Iraq unless there were a "catastrophic and catalyzing event--like a new Pearl Harbor."

The White House Criminal Conspiracy< - http://www.thenation.com/doc/20051114/delavega/3[br />================================================

Bush’s electoral success originates from the coalition of neo-conservatives – such as Cheney and Rumsfeld, and their experience of government going back to the Reagan era – coupled with the fundamentalist Christian right-wing. Their foreign policy agenda – advocated by aggressive conservatives such as the former assistant secretary of defence, Richard Perle – was on hold until 9/11. Those attacks changed everything, with the “war on terror” opening up the opportunity for all the key players involved in the Project for a New American Century – such as Cheney, Rumsfeld, Perle and Wolfowitz – to “solve” the problem of the Middle East their way.

THE CHINKS IN THE NEOCON ARMOUR - http://www.sundayherald.com/52584
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I trust you'll have the integrity to inform your viewers about Libby's involvement with PNAC.

Sincerely,



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HELP BLAST THIS TO THE MEDIA!!!


Local media blaster
http://www.democraticunderground.com/cu/cu.php?az=blaster

National Media List
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=109x17759

[spindrifter]

1. Fascinating People in the PNAC

Just a cursory look at some of the who's who": Bruce P. Jackson--ties to Lockheed Martin, Randy Scheunemann--a former (?) Rumsfeld advisor, Reuel Gerecht--also an American Enterprise Inst. Fellow-and he claims service simultaneously with the State Dept. and CIA for 9 yrs. And Ellen Bork--Robert's daughter to describe a few. PNAC's web page has some interesting material.
This goes to illustrate how a lot of corporate money buys the dashboard and puts the people behind the wheel.

[No Exit]

2. Bravo!!!

[iamthebandfanman]

3. :)

u should include their statement from 1998 thats on their website still about iraq, and what they wanted to happen.

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

[LunaC]

8. It's all detailed extensively

in the first link (same as my sig line)

Anyone who reads it and isn't pissed off at the end hasn't been paying attention.

[spindrifter]

4. PNAC trashes CIA on 10-13-05

http://www.newamericancentury.org/cia-20051013.htm

Interesting move on Gary Schmitt's part. Is there actually a connection to Plamegate?

[LunaC]

9. Means, motive, opportunity

They can't risk having their Grand Conspiracy exposed, hence their repeated smears of critics.

[lonestarnot]

14. Mens Rhea

[LunaC]

15. Had to look it up

Mens Rea - for anyone initially stymied like me - means "guilty mind". Good term to add to the repertoire. Thanks.

[lonestarnot]

16. Black's Law Dictionary?

[texpatriot2004]

5. Thanks for this post and the media blast link...sent it out in TX nt

[Fridays Child]

6. How disheartening that you have to put it all together for these...

...so-called journalists. Their lack of curiosity is appalling.

[Stockholm]

7. Well done

Sent it to Helen Thomas.

[LunaC]

11. THANK YOU!

Helen Thomas is perfect! She's got the guts to do something with the info. Brilliant move on your part. Thanks again!

[tiptoe]

10. ya got "underneath and above it all" . Thank you.

[AtomicKitten]

12. Good work.

Although Tweety has his nose firmly wedged up Bush's ass.

[Joe Chi Minh]

13. Yet still the polls are heeded by DUers,

even, I believe, when they are explicitly conducted or sponsored by some organ or other of the corporate media, without so much as a caveat to the effect that Bush's figures are subject to a margin of error of minus between 10% to 20%.

Indeed, the very subtext of this thread is that people should be able to rely on the corporate media to discover the truth concerning issues they address. Well, of course, putatively, that is their task, and it needs to be pushed and pushed by progressives, but it has never ever been the case, without passing through the filter - some kind of filter - in more democratic days, most of the time of an automatic unconscious vetting to align with the Establishment's requirements.

Now, however, the vetting is deliberately, pro-actively and totally dishonest, to the point of naked mendacity, whenever that is what is required by this Government of that very same complexion. In other words, pretty much all the time.

Ironically, in those good old days, some of that shaping of the news by the Establishment was, in effect, making the best of a bad job. It is the godless neocons of left and right that have both brought the UK so low. It would, indeed scarcely be possible to overstate the degradation, anomie, immorality and lawlessness, into which the country has been hurled or the moral turpitude of its rulers. (Yesterday, it was reported that a woman was told she could not be informed of the date of husband's release from prison, as his crime had not been serious enough. He had apparently stabbed her four times!)

An interesting headline in the Mail today, not a million miles from this topic. And it is only its preference for the Tories (properly so-called), who today are even worse, that allows it to see this truth:

"Conspiracy of Silence: Mr Bush fights for his political life over lies that took the US to war. The bitter irony is that those lies were forged here, yet the men behid them have flourished. WHAT DOES THIS SAY ABOUT BRITISH DEMOCRACY?" (My italics). Interesting that this former Bush "minion of minions" in the ranks of our now endemically perjurious press should refer to him as "Mr" and not "President".

Incidentally, is it possible that some of this animus could spring from the Conrad Black scandal, could anyone say?