Reply #25: Don't forget PNAC's

[JohnyCanuck]

Rebuilding America's Defenses white paper which stated, "Indeed, the United States has for decades sought to play a more permanent role in Gulf regional security. While the unresolved conflict with Iraq provides the immediate justification, the need for a substantial American force presence in the Gulf transcends the issue of the regime of Saddam Hussein." (emphasis mine /jc) Rebuilding America's Defenses Pg 14 (Adobe Acrobat required to view).

When the PNAC brainiacs drew up their plans for invading Iraq and deposing Saddam I'd say it was a pretty fair bet that they had (and probably still have today) every intention of establishing military bases in Iraq from which they could launch further wars and invasions against any remaining Middle Eastern regimes which had the temerity to refuse to say, "How high?" when the USA said jump or, "How much more?" when the USA said, "Pump more oil."


From Will Pitt's Truthout.org article on PNAC:

Of Gods and Mortals and Empire

Vice President Dick Cheney is a founding member of PNAC, along with Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and Defense Policy Board chairman Richard Perle. Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz is the ideological father of the group. Bruce Jackson, a PNAC director, served as a Pentagon official for Ronald Reagan before leaving government service to take a leading position with the weapons manufacturer Lockheed Martin.

PNAC is staffed by men who previously served with groups like Friends of the Democratic Center in Central America, which supported America's bloody gamesmanship in Nicaragua and El Salvador, and with groups like The Committee for the Present Danger, which spent years advocating that a nuclear war with the Soviet Union was "winnable."

<snip>

In August of 2002, Defense Policy Board chairman and PNAC member Richard Perle heard a policy briefing from a think tank associated with the Rand Corporation. According to the Washington Post and The Nation, the final slide of this presentation described "Iraq as the tactical pivot, Saudi Arabia as the strategic pivot, and Egypt as the prize" in a war that would purportedly be about ridding the world of Saddam Hussein's weapons. Bush has deployed massive forces into the Mideast region, while simultaneously engaging American forces in the Philippines and playing nuclear chicken with North Korea. Somewhere in all this lurks at least one of the "major theater wars" desired by the September 2000 PNAC report.

Iraq is but the beginning, a pretense for a wider conflict. Donald Kagan, a central member of PNAC, sees America establishing permanent military bases in Iraq after the war. This is purportedly a measure to defend the peace in the Middle East, and to make sure the oil flows. The nations in that region, however, will see this for what it is: a jump-off point for American forces to invade any nation in that region they choose to. The American people, anxiously awaiting some sort of exit plan after America defeats Iraq, will see too late that no exit is planned.

http://truthout.org/docs_02/022203A.htm

More on PNAC here as well (LunaC's GD thread PNAC 101): http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=104&topic_id=2234142