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Are the ‘Neocons’ Conning Us? COMMENT BY LARRY ROSS JUNE 29, 2004 The neoconservative group, in Washington, some of them in the "Office of Special Plans" in the Pentagon have conspired to manufacture false intelligence, such as WMD in Iraq. It was a fraud as revealed by by Bill Berkowitz, September 5, 2003 http://www.tompaine.com/feature2.cfm/ID/8791 and many other articles in this site. I mentioned the neocon plan in a my comment on 14/2/04: http://www.nuclearfree.org.nz/waterloo.htm, Their purpose was to fool the US people into supporting their pre-planned war on Iraq. The false reports frightened the US people with stories that Saddam had weapons of mass destruction, including nuclear weapons, ready to be used to attack the US. Tony Blair added more false reports, claiming Saddam could attack the UK in 45 minutes. Enough of the people and politicians in US Congress and UK Parliament were indeed fooled and voted to support and participate in this war without UN sanction. The war was launched and the neocons now stand to be prosecuted for a growing number of war crimes. However the neocon plot is beginning to unravel. The neoconservatives plot details are being increasingly exposed. They are being investigated by the FBI and others for concocting and spreading false intelligence. http://www.rumormillnews.com/cgi-bin/forum.cgi?noframes;read=50436 , They are trying to cover up their crimes, further their Project For A New American Century, and trying to direct the attention of the US, Congress and Senate elsewhere. They are concocting the justification for a new war with Iran http://www.nuclearfree.org.nz/neoconsee.htm and perhaps with Syria and North Korea. Will they get away with a new lies and a new war as well? Everyone can make a difference. None of us is immune from the consequences - even in New Zealand. Larry Ross, Secretary,
NZ Nuclear-Free Peacemaking ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Are
the ‘Neocons’ Conning Us? Phillip Lindsay © 2003 ‘Resist the beginning and consider the end.’ Recently I wrote a piece giving the pros and cons for the invasion of Iraq, declaring myself on the pro side at the time. No sooner had I sent that email I had a quite powerful insight into what could also be going on, something I had been observing for a while, yet hoping against hope that it was not true. Instead of swinging back to the other pole and polarising with a new point of view, I choose to observe from the centre now and try to ask the right questions. In reflection I wondered whether my original piece and the many of those who agreed with me on it was a justification for simply a lack of being informed, or feeling that one had to take a stand one way or the other, based upon what scant information we may have had at our disposal. Some of what I wrote in another email about being informed is related to this piece. What follows is an edited and cobbled version of some of the most factual and least speculative material that I have found on this subject on the internet. There is a little of my commentary here and there (shown with “Editor’s note”), but mostly it is from other commentators, some of whom are not always acknowledged in the text below, and for this I apologise. Many reports with similar details abound in newspapers like the New York Times, The Observer and the Guardian; much of it is baldly stated by the neocons themselves on their website, in the press and through their actions of the last thirty years or so. For those not acquainted, it covers the general gist of this kind of thinking, and provides links that can further your own enquiries. For some of you this may be passé or yesterday’s news, others completely new. I leave it to your consideration. Topics The Neo-conservatives and the Project for the New American Century (PNAC) (Editor’s note) There is an undeniable and compelling argument for a wider agenda from within the American administration on Iraq and the Middle East. It takes its form through a group of high-ranking officials who call themselves the ‘neo-conservatives’, or ‘neocons’ as some of their detractors refer to them. These individuals hold high ranking positions in the Pentagon Defence department, the White House, the National Security Council, the CIA, State Department and several other areas around Washington, including influential media. They are seen by many as creating a new imperialistic and fascist America. Far be it from paranoid conspiracy theory, the track record of these individuals speaks for itself, as have many public statements as to their agenda. One of their most public places of stated intention is the website www.newamericancentury.org. William Kristol, publisher and editor of billionaire Rupert Murdoch’s Weekly Standard magazine, states their vision:
“Our aim is to remind Americans of these lessons and to draw their consequences for today. Here are four consequences: · We need to
increase defense spending significantly if we are to carry out our global
· We need to strengthen our ties to democratic allies and to challenge regimes hostile to our interests and values. · We need to promote the cause of political and economic freedom abroad. · We need to accept responsibility for America's unique role in preserving and extending an international order friendly to our security, our prosperity, and our principles. Such a Reaganite policy of military strength and moral clarity may not be fashionable today. But 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.” (New American Century manifesto) Some well-known signatories to this website and others aligned with the principles of the neocons, include the following:
There are many others who will be listed at the end of this paper, along with a brief background. However, those mentioned represent some of the most powerful and influential of the core group. In 1996, the Institute for Advanced Strategic and Political Studies made a proposal called A Clean Break: A New Strategy for Securing the Realm. The report was authored by a study group commissioned by the Institute for Advanced Strategic and Political Studies with the purpose of providing policy recommendations to the incoming government of Likud Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Several individuals who now have key positions in the Bush administration contributed to the project, including Douglas Feith, David Wurmser, and Richard Perle. They recommended the following: · Abandon the Oslo Accords. · Reserve the right to invade the West Bank and Gaza Strip when Israel believes it is appropriate to do so. · Remove Saddam Hussein from power. · Overthrow or destabilize the governments of Syria, Lebanon, Saudi Arabia, and Iran. · Re-establish a policy of pre-emptive strikes. The Washington Times, quoting the report, stated, “Israel would ‘transcend its foes’ by ‘re-establishing the principle of pre-emption, rather than retaliation alone, and by ceasing to absorb blows to the nation without response,’ according to a summary of the panel's deliberations prepared by the think tank.” A nine-point strategy to remove Saddam Hussein was endorsed by ten former government officials and was published as an open letter. Signatories to this document were most of the above-mentioned: Perle, Solarz, Abrams, Armitage, Bolton, Feith, Ikle, Khalilzad, Rodfield, Rumsfield, Wolfowitz, Wurmser and Zakheim. The PNAC prepared the following report, Building America's Defences: Strategies, Forces And Resources For A New Century, in September 2000 – for Cheney, Rumsfield, Wolfowitz, Jeb Bush and Lewis Libby. The report’s plan for US global domination included “a premeditated attack on Iraq to secure ‘regime change’ even before” George Bush “took power in January 2001.” Likewise, much of the input for this report was from the same group of people previously mentioned – mainly ‘neocons’. Another report called
Strategic Energy Policy Challenges For The 21st Century, (April 2001),
summarized an impending U.S. energy crisis and concluded that Saddam Hussein
was a threat to “American interests” because of his control
of Iraq’s enormous and high quality oil reserves:
The PNAC also predicts a future wherein "advanced forms of biological warfare that can target specific genotypes, may transform biological warfare from the realm of terror to a politically useful tool" (p.60, www.newamericancentury.org/RebuildingAmericasDefenses.pdf). William Kristol says that 'the Americans looked around and saw that the world is not what they thought it was. The world is a dangerous place. Therefore the Americans looked for a doctrine that would enable them to cope with this dangerous world. And the only doctrine they found was the neoconservative one.' Some would argue that these kind of sentiments are purely fear-based, others that policing the world with pre-emption is the key. Kristol continues 'That doctrine maintains that the problem with the Middle East is the absence of democracy and of freedom. It follows that the only way to block people like Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden is to disseminate democracy and freedom. To change radically the cultural and political dynamics that creates such people. And the way to fight the chaos is to create a new world order that will be based on freedom and human rights - and to be ready to use force in order to consolidate this new world. So that, really, is what the war is about. It is being fought to consolidate a new world order, to create a new Middle East.' Kristol goes on, 'But the truth is that it's an American war. The neo-conservatives succeeded because they touched the bedrock of America. The thing is that America has a profound sense of mission. America has a need to offer something that transcends a life of comfort, that goes beyond material success. Therefore, because of their ideals, the Americans accepted what the neoconservatives proposed. They didn't want to fight a war over interests, but over values. They wanted a war driven by a moral vision. They wanted to hitch their wagon to something bigger than themselves.' "For some of Israel's supporters both within the U.S. administration and the think tanks that feed it ideas, catastrophic developments ... and the instability, chaos and violence that would ensue, fit into a broader plan to completely remake an unruly Middle East, with Israel as the dominant local power under overall American hegemony," wrote columnist Ali Abunimah for the Electronic Intifada, an Internet news service that covers Middle East events "from a Palestinian perspective." In fact, the imperialist-minded “neo-conservative” movement, of which Kristol has been a major player, emerged from the ranks of an elite group of ‘ex-Trotskyites’—including Kristol’s father, Irving Kristol, a veteran of the CIA-financed American Committee for Cultural Freedom—who began to infiltrate and remake the “conservative” movement first in the mid-1950s under the patronage of ex-CIA figure William F. Buckley, Jr. and, more increasingly and more openly during the Reagan era. These Trotskyite neo-conservatives are represented in policy-making circles in the current George W. Bush administration by such figures as longtime Israeli loyalist Richard Perle, chairman of the Defense Policy Board, which advises Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, and Perle’s longtime ally, Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz. While Irving Kristol has long been a key player inside the influential “conservative” American Enterprise Institute, his son William Kristol maintains at least two other primary public relations outlets of his own: Empower America, co-founded by Kristol with former Reps. Jack Kemp (R-N.Y.) and Vin Weber (R-Minn.) and former Education Secretary William Bennett, all known for their devotion to the pro-Israel cause. America has reached the conclusion that it has no choice: it has to take on itself the project of rebuilding the Arab world. Therefore, the Iraq war is really the beginning of a gigantic historical experiment whose purpose is to do in the Arab world what was done in Germany and Japan after World War II. Few are yet able to look ahead and see that the Bush Administration has unleashed political, economic and military forces that cannot be recalled or stopped, short of their complete implementation, without setting off a backlash or unleashing a global holocaust. The power grab that has begun has placed the globalist interests behind the U.S. and British governments in an absolute do or die situation. In conjunction with Paul Wolfowitz’s campaign inside the Bush administration to broaden the war against terrorism, to include efforts to crush Arab and Islamic states that are perceived by Israel to be its enemies, William Kristol recently issued a call to arms, signed by a host of foreign policy luminaries, echoing Wolfowitz. These luminaries, in turn, are using their connections through the academic, media and policy-making establishments to pressure the Bush administration for the action Wolfowitz is demanding. Iraq is just the start of this process and there is fairly compelling evidence that they will not stop until their aims have been achieved. All of the signers (New American Century), likewise, have longstanding and intimate connections to the Kristol family network and their allies in the sphere of influence surrounding Richard Perle from the old “Team B” days of the 1970s. They are indeed the “war party” of 2003. Bush Administration and the Pentagon “"THE PENTAGON
policy staff", writes Colin Powell in his memoirs, A Soldier’s
Way (1995), was "a refuge of Reagan-era hardliners". "They’re
all right-wing nuts like you", Powell, then head of the military
Joint Chiefs of Staff, told Richard Cheney, who was then Secretary for
Defence. That was in 1991 at the end of the Gulf war, under Bush I, and
he was referring to people like Paul Wolfowitz and Richard Perle, who
are now running the Pentagon under Bush II and vice-president Cheney. "As the Bush administration debates going to war against Iraq, its most hawkish members are pushing a sweeping vision for the Middle East that sees the overthrow of President Saddam Hussein of Iraq as merely a first step in the region's transformation. The argument for reshaping the political landscape in the Mideast has been pushed for years by some Washington think tanks and in hawkish circles. It is now being considered as a possible US policy with the ascent of key hard-liners in the administration, from Paul Wolfowitz and Douglas Feith in the Pentagon to John Hannah and Lewis Libby on the vice president's staff and John Bolton in the State Department, analysts and officials say. Iraq, the hawks argue, is just the first piece of the puzzle. After an ouster of Hussein, they say, the United States will have more leverage to act against Syria and Iran, will be in a better position to resolve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and will be able to rely less on Saudi oil. The thinking does not represent official US policy. But increasingly the argument has served as a justification for a military attack against Iraq, and elements of the strategy have emerged in speeches by administration officials, most prominently Vice President Dick Cheney. A powerful corollary of the strategy is that a pro-US Iraq would make the region safer for Israel and, indeed, its staunchest proponents are ardent supporters of the Israeli right-wing. Administration officials, meanwhile, have increasingly argued that the onset of an Iraq allied to the US would give the administration more sway in bringing about a settlement to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, though Cheney and others have offered few details on precisely how.In its broadest terms, the advocates argue that a democratic Iraq would unleash similar change elsewhere in the Arab world.'Everyone will flip out, starting with the Saudis,' said Meyrav Wurmser, director of the Center for Middle East Policy at the Hudson Institute in Washington [and another author of the 1996 policy paper written for Israel, above]. 'It will send shock waves throughout the Arab world. Look, we already are pushing for democracy in the Palestinian Authority, though not with a huge amount of success, and we need a little bit more of a heavy-handed approach,' she said. 'But if we can get a democracy in the Palestinian Authority, democracy in Iraq, get the Egyptians to improve their human rights and open up their system, it will be a spectacular change. After a war with Iraq, then you really shape the region.'" (John Donnelly and Anthony Shadid, Boston Globe, September 10, 2002) "If you want
to know what the administration has in mind for Iraq, here's a hint: It
has less to do with weapons of mass destruction than with implementing
an ambitious U.S. vision to redraw the map of the Middle East. The new
map would be drawn with an eye to two main objectives: controlling the
flow of oil and ensuring Israel's continued regional military superiority.[Patrick]
Clawson [a policy analyst with the Washington Institute for Near East
Policy], whose institute enjoys close ties with the Bush administration,
was candid during a Capitol Hill forum on a post-Hussein Iraq in 1999:
'U.S. oil companies would have an opportunity to make significant profits,'
he said. 'We should not be embarrassed about the commercial advantages
that would come from a re-integration of Iraq into the world economy.'...But
taking over Iraq and remaking the global oil market is not necessarily
the endgame. The next steps, favored by hard-liners determined to elevate
Israeli security above all other U.S. foreign policy goals, would be to
destroy any remaining perceived threat to the Jewish state: namely, the
regimes in Syria and Iran. In 1998, [David] Wurmser, now in the State
Department, told the Jewish newspaper Forward that if [Iraqi opposition
leader] Ahmad Chalabi were in power and extended a no-fly, no-drive zone
in northern Iraq, it would provide the crucial piece for an anti-Syria,
anti-Iran bloc. 'It puts Scuds out of the range of Israel and provides
the geographic beachhead between Turkey, Jordan and Israel,' he said.
'This should anchor the Middle East pro-Western coalition.' [Richard]
Perle, in the same 1998 article, told Forward that a coalition of pro-Israeli
groups was 'at the forefront with the legislation with regard to Iran.
One can only speculate what it might accomplish if it decided to focus
its attention on Saddam Hussein.'Now, Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon
has joined the call against Tehran, arguing in a November interview with
the Times of London that the U.S. should shift its focus to Iran 'the
day after' the Iraq war ends.[T]he hard-liners in and around the administration
seem to know in their hearts that the battle to carve up the Middle East
would not be won without the blood of Americans and their allies. 'One
can only hope that we turn the region into a caldron, and faster, please,'
[Michael] Ledeen preached to the choir at National Review Online last
August. 'That's our mission in the war against terror.'" A Faction of the Republican party “IN THE AFTERMATH
of 11 September, the neo-conservative right consolidated a dominant position
in the Bush administration. While pushing through their military-strategic
agenda, Cheney, Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz have also exerted a decisive influence
over US foreign policy, sidelining Colin Powell and the State Department. Zionist Agenda? [Editor’s Note: This is in no way meant to be an anti-Jewish assemblage of material, although from my experience, many will see it thus.]
"Only in Washington
does one get a true sense of the obsession of these Pentagon civilians,"
writes Hugo Young, a Guardian columnist. "Conversationally, it is
common talk that some of them, not including Rumsfeld, are as much Israeli
as American nationalists. Behind nervous, confiding hands come sardonic
whispers of an American outpost of Likud. So why are the Zionists pushing for a US invasion of Iraq? First, the Zionists believe that bad relations between the US and Arab nations is good for Israel. It's no mistake Iraq and Iran were specifically fingered as part of an "axis of evil," nations the Bushites have singled out for invasion and "democratization." Sharon told fellow Zionist and U.S. Undersecretary of State John Bolton last month that he wants Syria and Libya attacked next. As if to make sure he received the correct marching orders, Bolton also met with Foreign Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Housing and Construction Minister Natan Sharansky. Second, the Zionists are itching to "transfer" - i.e., to ethnically cleanse - as many Palestinians from the West Bank and Gaza as possible. Israel will do this while the US is busy slaughtering Iraqis. "Israel should have exploited the repression of the demonstrations in China, when world attention focused on that country, to carry out mass expulsions among the Arabs of the territories," Netanyahu told students at Bar-Ilan University in 1989. Americans may be clueless about the intentions of Zionists toward the Palestinians, but in Israel ethnic cleansing is a popular subject of discussion. Fifty percent or more of Israelis think ethnic cleansing is a good idea. This from a nation that supposedly remembers the Holocaust. It has nothing to do with the security of the American people. It has everything to do with Israel and the Likudites [Faction of Zionists]. Perle, Wolfowitz, Feith, and their fellow travelers from the Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs (JINSA), the Center for Security Policy (CSP), the American Enterprise Institute (AEI) and the Hudson Institute -- as well as defense contractors and conservative foundations bankrolled by far-right American Zionists, are calling the shots on Bush's invasion of Iraq. The Palestinian population growth alarms the Zionist leaders and is viewed as a threat to Israel's existence as a "Jewish" state. Zionists insist that the "sacred" blood of the "chosen people" must not be diluted. Feith was one of the Netanyahu advisers behind the "Clean Break" policy [see above], and he repeated his total opposition to a Palestinian state in a 1999 book, which he co-authored for the Zionist Organization of America. His sponsoring the Saudi-bashing session is consistent with every other aspect of his performance at the Pentagon. He is in open defiance of President George W. Bush's often-stated policy of a "two-state solution" to the Israeli. The leading U.S. Jewish groups have not taken a formal stand on war with Iraq, and polls indicate that American Jews' views on the war mirror those of the U.S. population as a whole — with 59 percent of American Jews backing military action compared with 58 percent of the population. A stronger Israel is very much embedded in the rationale for war," said Richard Stengel, a columnist with Time magazine's online edition. "It is a part of the argument that dare not speak its name, a fantasy quietly cherished by the neoconservative faction in the Bush administration and by many leaders of the American Jewish community." “Pastor Niemoller spoke for the thousands and thousands of men … he spoke (too modestly of himself) and said that, when the Nazis attacked the Communists, he was a little uneasy, but, after all, he was not a Communist, and so he did nothing: and then they attacked the Socialists, and he was a little uneasier, but, still, he was not a Socialist, and he did nothing; and then the schools, the press, the Jews, and so on, and he was always uneasier, but still he did nothing. And then they attacked the Church, and he was a Churchman, and he did something - but then it was too late." (German anti-Nazi activist, Pastor Martin Niemöller) The Rise of Christian Zionism “THERE HAS BEEN
a coalescing over recent years between the Christian right and the Jewish
Zionist right into a fundamentalist, anti-Islamic front. Leaders of the
Christian right appeared to have dropped the anti-Semitism for which many
of them were notorious. Some were associated with the racist John Birch
Society and other far-right groups. Recently released tapes of White House
conversations in 1972 between the world famous reverend Billy Graham and
president Richard Nixon revealed the evangelist preacher denouncing ‘the
Jewish stranglehold’ over the US media. In his 1990 book, The Televangelist,
the reverend Patrick Robinson attacked the allegedly corrosive effect
of "the liberal Jewish population" on American public life.
“THE CHRISTIAN
RIGHT also supports Israel for theological reasons, based on a literal
interpretation of the Bible. A key text is the Book of Revelation, which
predicts Armageddon – the final struggle between the forces of good
and the forces of evil – and the Day of Judgement. This apocalyptic
approach is particularly associated with the growing numbers of Christian
Zionists, who are particularly strong in the Southern states. (Ken Silverstein
& Michael Scherer: Born-Again Zionists, Mother Jones Sept/Oct 2002)
In supporting the creation of a so-called Biblical or Eretz Israel, from
the Mediterranean to the Jordan (that is, incorporating the occupied territories),
the Christian Zionists claim they are answering God’s call in the
Old Testament. And Pat Robertson has stated that "what the Muslims want to do to the Jews is worse [than Hitler]."Political "neo-conservatives" have taken up the attack on Islam as well. Kenneth Adelman, who serves on the Pentagon's Defense Policy Board, says that "the more you examine [Islam], the more militaristic it seems...its founder, Mohammed, was a warrior, not a peace advocate like Jesus." Eliot Cohen, also on the Defense Policy Board, says that the enemy is not terrorism but "militant Islam." Norman Podhoretz, meanwhile, wrote earlier this year in Commentary magazine, "there is something in the religion (Islam) itself that legitimizes the likes of Osama bin Laden." Money The vast majority of PNAC's money comes from funds forwarded through the New Citizenship Project, another organization founded by Kristol. Watchgroup, Media Transparency reports PNAC has received a total of $600,000 between the organization's founding in 1997 and 2000. The New Citizenship Project is primarily funded by grants from the Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation, the John M. Olin Foundation, and the Sarah Scaife Foundation. All are conservative philanthropic non-profits. This foundation is known for its generous funding for pro-Israel and anti-Arab and anti-Islamic propaganda causes. “George W’s
military-strategic policy (set out in the National Security Strategy of
the US – see Socialism Today No.69) was not just a response to 11
September, though the wave of anger at the attacks gave Bush the political
opportunity to put it into effect. The new military doctrine was incubated
over a long period by a gang of cold-war warriors and Reagan-era hawks.
In and out of office, they have been associated with several neo-conservative
think-tanks linked to the big arms manufacturers. During the Clinton administration,
the Centre for Security Policy (CSP) and the Jewish Institute for National
Security Affairs (JINSA) formed the core of a shadow defence establishment,
whose leading figures are now running the White House and Defence Department.
Many of these ultra-right-wingers held top positions in the Reagan administration,
when they campaigned against détente and in favour of an accelerated
US arms programme. Before the election of Bush II, they campaigned for
‘regime change’ in Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Egypt and the Palestinian
Authority. They produced a series of reports and newspaper opinion pieces
vociferously advocating the assertion of US hegemony, unconstrained by
international agreements or hesitant allies. Both are committed to US
support for the Israeli right. Cheney was on JINSA’s board of advisers,
and both Richard Perle (now chair of the Pentagon’s Defense Policy
Board) and James Woolsey (former CIA director) are still on the board.
Apart from producing propaganda, JINSA’s main activity appears to
be arranging trips to Israel for senior retired officers who work for
big arms companies supplying weaponry to the Pentagon and Israel. Such funding is consistent with the neo-conservatives’ unwavering support for Israel’s right-wing regime. Reflecting JINSA’s position that ‘there is no Israeli occupation’, Rumsfeld (at a Pentagon open discussion on 6 August) repeatedly referred to the ‘so-called Occupied Territories’. The Israelis, he commented, were merely ‘making some settlements in various parts of the so-called occupied area’, which was possible because Israel had ‘won’ all its wars with various Arab opponents. The neo-conservatives believe that the US should smash Saddam’s regime before attempting any Israel-Palestine settlement. Only when the balance of forces in the Middle East is tipped decisively in favour of Israel and against Iran and the Arab states should there be moves to establish a ‘Palestinian entity’ on Israel’s terms.” (Fundamentalists in the White House Lynn Walsh) Alternative News Links Christian Science
Monitor http://www.csmonitor.com/ Thought-Provoking Articles Neoconservative Clout
Seen in U.S. Iraq Policy Bruce Murphy Israel, American Jews,
And Bush's War On Iraq: Too Many Smoking Guns To Ignore By Bill and Kathleen
Christon, Former CIA political analysts. |
