quote:
Op donderdag 16 juni 2011 21:34 schreef TitusPullo het volgende:[..]
PNAC zou gebaat zijn geweest bij een aanslag die aanleiding gaf tot de ontwikkeling van nieuw wapentuig. Dat geldt niet voor de aanslagen van elf september.
Zoals wikipedia aanhaalt over PNAC:
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"New Pearl Harbor"
Section V of Rebuilding America's Defenses, entitled "Creating Tomorrow's Dominant Force", includes the sentence: "Further, the process of transformation, even if it brings revolutionary change, is likely to be a long one, absent some catastrophic and catalyzing event––like a new Pearl Harbor" (51).[13]
Though not arguing that Bush administration PNAC members were complicit in those attacks, other social critics such as commentator Manuel Valenzuela and journalist Mark Danner,[39][40][41] investigative journalist John Pilger, in New Statesman,[42] and former editor of The San Francisco Chronicle Bernard Weiner, in CounterPunch,[43] all argue that PNAC members used the events of 9/11 as the "Pearl Harbor" that they needed––that is, as an "opportunity" to "capitalize on" (in Pilger's words), in order to enact long-desired plans.
In het licht van de lobby van PNAC bij Clinton om Irak binnen te vallen, die dat overigens weigerde, was een president als Bush een uitkomst. Met mensen als
Donald Rumsfeld, Paul Wolfowitz, Richard Perle,
John Bolton, Richard Armitage, and Elliott Abrams die ondergetekenden waren van de brief aan Clinton, waarbij dikgedrukte namen ook deel uitmaakten van de Bush Administratie.
Verder valt op de wiki van de
Bush administratie het volgende te lezen:
quote:
Political philosophy
The guiding political philosophy of the Bush administration has been termed neoconservative. The specific elements of neoconservative leadership have been itemized in policy papers by leading members of the Project for a New American Century, and is represented in the editorial perspective of the political journal the Weekly Standard. Administration officials chosen from the membership of the Project for a New American Century (PNAC) began with the selection of the candidate for vice president, Dick Cheney. Others included Richard Armitage, Zalmay Khalilzad, Lewis "Scooter" Libby, Richard Perle, former U.S. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, and Paul Wolfowitz.
In 1998, members of the PNAC, including Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz, wrote to President Bill Clinton urging him to remove Saddam Hussein from power using US diplomatic, political and military power.
In September 2000, the PNAC issued a report entitled Rebuilding America's Defenses: Strategies, Forces, and Resources For A New Century, proceeding "from the belief that America should seek to preserve and extend its position of global leadership by maintaining the preeminence of U.S. military forces." The group stated that when diplomacy or sanctions fail, the United States must be prepared to take military action. The PNAC argued that the Cold War deployment of forces was obsolete. Defense spending and force deployment must reflect the post–Cold War duties that US forces are obligated to perform. Constabulary duties such as peacekeeping in the Balkans and the enforcement of the No Fly Zones in Iraq put a strain upon, and reduced the readiness of US forces. The PNAC recommended the forward redeployment of US forces at new strategically placed permanent military bases in Southeast Europe and Southeast Asia. Permanent bases would ease the strain on US forces, allowing readiness to be maintained and the carrier fleet to be reduced. Furthermore, PNAC advocated that the US-globalized military should be enlarged, equipped and restructured for the "constabulary" roles associated with shaping the security in critical regions of the world.[44]
Ik ben niet ver genoeg ingelezen om hier definitieve uitspraken over te doen, dus dit moet als speculatie van mijn kant opgevat worden:
De transformatie van de Amerikaanse militaire macht kan gezien worden als de verplaatsing van strategische posities daterend uit de koude oorlog, naar plaatsen die voor nu, of de nabije toekomst tactisch zijn. Gezien de opkomst van Zuid-Oost Azie wat betreft welvaart en militaire macht is de verplaatsing vanuit (Oost-)Europa richting het Midden-Oosten en verder een aannemelijk gevolg vanuit de politieke filosofie van PNAC.
Een ander deel van de transformatie kan gezien worden als de privatisatie van oorlogsvoering, of 'guns for hire'. Het mag algemeen bekend zijn dat het Pentagon al jaren de CIA spookbedrijven (kan het juiste woord even niet vinden) gebruikte om zogenaamde 'Black Ops' uit te laten voeren. Het meest bekende voorbeeld uit de periode van de Bush Administratie is natuurlijk
Halliburton, dat nou niet bepaald een rooskleurig verleden heeft:
quote:
During the Balkans conflict in the 1990s, Kellogg Brown-Root (KBR) supported U.S. peacekeeping forces in Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia and Hungary with food, laundry, transportation, and other life-cycle management services.[25]
In 1998, Halliburton merged with Dresser Industries, which included Kellogg. Prescott Bush was a director of Dresser Industries, which is now part of Halliburton; his son, former president George H. W. Bush, worked for Dresser Industries in several positions from 1948 to 1951, before he founded Zapata Corporation.[26]
The Wall Street Journal reported in 2001 that a subsidiary of Halliburton Energy Services called Halliburton Products and Services Ltd. (HPS) opened an office in Tehran. The company, HPS, operated on the ninth floor of a new north Tehran tower block. Although HPS was incorporated in the Cayman Islands in 1975 and is "non-American", it shares both the logo and name of Halliburton Energy Services and, according to Dow Jones Newswires, offers services from Halliburton units worldwide through its Tehran office. Such behavior, undertaken while Cheney was CEO of Halliburton, may have violated the Trading with the Enemy Act. A Halliburton spokesman, responding to inquiries from Dow Jones, said "This is not breaking any laws. This is a foreign subsidiary and no U.S. person is involved in this. No U.S. person is facilitating any transaction. We are not performing directly in that country." Later Dave Lesar would book his own flights to the Tehran office through the UK arm of KBR. No legal action has been taken against the company or its officials.[27]
From 1995 to 2002, Halliburton Brown & Root Services Corp was awarded at least $2.5 billion but has spent considerably less to construct and run military bases, some in secret locations, as part of the Army's Logistics Civil Augmentation Program. This contract was a cost plus 13% contract and BRS employees were trained on how to pass GAO audits to ensure maximum profits were attained. It was also grounds for termination in the Balkans if any BRS employee spoke of Dick Cheney's being CEO. BRS was awarded and re-awarded contracts termed "noncompetitive" because BRS was the only company capable of pulling off the missions.[citation needed] DYNACORP actually won the competitively let second contract, but never received any work orders in the Balkans.[21]
In November 2002, KBR was tasked to plan oil well firefighting in Iraq, and in February 2003 was issued a contract to conduct the work. Critics contend that it was a no-bid contract, awarded due to Dick Cheney's position as vice president. Concern was also expressed that the contract could allow KBR to pump and distribute Iraqi oil.[29] Others contend, however, that this was not strictly a no-bid contract, and was invoked under a contract that KBR won "in a competitive bid process."[30] The contract, referred to as LOGCAP, is a contingency-based contract that is invoked at the convenience of the Army. Because the contract is essentially a retainer, specific orders are not competitively bid (as the overall contract was).
In May 2003, Halliburton revealed in SEC filings that its KBR subsidiary had paid a Nigerian official $2.4 million in bribes in order to receive favorable tax treatment.[31][32] , United Arab Emirates In October 2004, Halliburton opened a new 250,000-square-foot (23,000 m2) facility on 35 acres (140,000 m2), replacing an older facility that opened in 1948, in Rock Springs, Wyoming. With over approximately 500 employees, Halliburton is one of the largest private employers in Sweetwater County.[33]
Zoals je zelf kunt concluderen uit deze teksten, zijn politiek en bedrijfsleven innig verbonden, tot iets wat al langer bekend staat als het
corporate military complex military-industrial complex.
PNAC is nu overigens opgeheven en verworden tot het
Foreign Policy Initiative:
quote:
By the end of 2006, PNAC was "reduced to a voice-mail box and a ghostly website", with "a single employee" "left to wrap things up", according to the BBC News.[24] According to Tom Barry, "The glory days of the Project for the New American Century (PNAC) quickly passed."[25] In 2006, Gary Schmitt, former executive director of the PNAC, a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute and director of its program in Advanced Strategic Studies, stated that PNAC had come to a natural end:
When the project started, it was not intended to go forever. That is why we are shutting it down. We would have had to spend too much time raising money for it and it has already done its job. We felt at the time that there were flaws in American foreign policy, that it was neo-isolationist. We tried to resurrect a Reaganite policy. Our view has been adopted. Even during the Clinton administration we had an effect, with Madeleine Albright [then secretary of state] saying that the United States was 'the indispensable nation'. But our ideas have not necessarily dominated. We did not have anyone sitting on Bush's shoulder. So the work now is to see how they are implemented.[24]
PNAC's successor organization is the Foreign Policy Initiative.
Maar FPI is weer een heel ander hoofdstuk.