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**Armenian** · 10-27-2007, 03:28 PM

Re: The American Century: Neoconservatism

Neo-Conservatism Explained

by Llewellyn H. Rockwell, Jr.

Commentators across the spectrum have finally clued in to neo-conservatism as the intellectual framework of the Bush administration. We are suddenly faced with long think pieces on the role of political philosopher Leo Strauss in influencing the architects of the Iraq war and Bush's governance in general. We are also learning about the ideological path taken by former college Trotskyites into the Republican Party of the 1970s. It�s an instructive example of tenacity and dedication in translating ideas into practice.

Along with the political victory of the neocons (by victory I mean the reality that they now control many levers of power) has come shock and alarm of those who disagree with their policies. Their critics left and right regard their use of domestic police powers as contrary to constitutional guarantees, and their foreign policy as nothing but untrammeled aggression that violates human rights and makes us ever more vulnerable. Despite its political victory, the future of neo-conservatism rests with the war on Iraq and its aftermath. They brought about this war over the objections of most of the world, and relied heavily on the crudest form of chauvinistic sloganeering to sell it to the American people. Iraq has been destroyed, with most people living amidst appalling wreckage that neocons apparently failed to anticipate. Their raw military power unleashed utter chaos, barbarism, and fanaticism in what was once the most secular and liberal Arab state.

The neocons had a limitless faith in two tools: bombs for destruction and dollars for reconstruction. With their appalling ignorance of the complexity of society, they believed that these two tools were enough to reconstruct the region, and maybe the whole world. It was only a matter of political will, so they believed. The bombs caused the regime to flee, but the dollars have not been able to put it back together again. As only a slight symbol of the Pyrrhic victory, the Saddam dinar is now at its highest value relative to the dollar since 1996. No WMDs were ever found, and terrorism in the region is getting worse. Seeing this disaster, and sensing that they are losing the propaganda war, neocons are scrambling to control the spin. This has taken several forms: 1) defending neocon policies, 2) denying that such a thing as neo-conservatism exists, 3) admitting that neocons do exist but claiming that they represent nothing really new and thus pose no threat, and 4) accusing critics of neo-conservatism of bigotry.

That these claims cannot be reconciled is hardly surprising: the goal is to relieve the new pressure, not to sort out confusions. For years, they've labored in journals and journalism, and their sudden defensiveness is precisely what one would expect now that they have seized and exercised power with such awful results. Naturally, the critics go to great lengths to examine the ins and outs of the neocon philosophical orientation to discern what disaster we can expect next. However, very little commentary on neo-conservatism deals with the crucial question to ask of any non-libertarian ideology: to what extent does it seek to use the welfare-warfare state to achieve its end? The answer with regard to neo-conservatism is clear in the actions of the Bush administration:

* it has increased overall government spending by more than any administration since LBJ;
* it has unleashed government spies like never before;
* it has unleashed a series of wars against foreign countries that posed no threat whatever to the US, laying waste to their economies and cultures.

Now, this is remarkable given that the essence of conservatism in America is skepticism about political power, though it is true that all conservatives (a word that only became common parlance in American politics after the Second World War) have been excessively friendly to the state. Yet conservatism did mean a desire to jettison utopian schemes and to defer to the tacit wisdom associated with what is. Conservatism was an unstable ideology, and, in fact, not an ideology at all. It was a predilection to preserve rather than innovate in matters of public policy. Generally speaking, conservatism offered valuable critiques of the left, but had no positive program apart from its endorsement of Truman's Cold War. In order to ensure support for the Cold War, conservatives came to terms with Leviathan and systematically resisted the libertarian implications of their domestic program in foreign and military affairs.

It is often forgotten that it was not only American conservatives who backed anti-communism. Another group of anti-communists of the period was variously called Scoop Jackson Democrats, Cold War Liberals, Democratic Socialists or Social Democrats, or simply the anti-Stalinist Left. They favored big government at home and abroad, and had a particular distaste for the Reds in Russia because they saw them as having discredited the great dream of socialist planning (and killed Trotsky). They were passionately for the Cold War but saw it as less an ideological struggle than a political one. They favored New Deal-style planning but rejected the excesses of Soviet-style totalism.

Of them, Mises wrote: What these people who call themselves 'anticommunist liberals'�are aiming at is communism without those inherent and necessary features of communism which are still unpalatable to Americans. They make an illusory distinction between communism and socialism�. They think that they have proved their case by employing such aliases for socialism as planning or the welfare state�. What these self-styled 'anticommunist liberals' are fighting against is not communism as such, but a communist system in which they themselves are not at the helm. What they are aiming at is a socialist�system in which they themselves or their most intimate friends hold the reins of government. It would perhaps be too much to say that they are burning with a desire to liquidate other people. They simply do not wish to be liquidated. In a socialist commonwealth, only the supreme autocrat and his abettors have this assurance.

He continues: An 'anti-something' movement displays a purely negative attitude. It has no chance whatever to succeed. Its passionate diatribes virtually advertise the program that they attack. People must fight for something that they want to achieve, not simply reject an evil, however bad it may be. They must, without any reservations, endorse the program of the market economy. After Vietnam, the Democratic Party became home to an ever-more influential group of Cold War skeptics, so many leftist Cold Warriors gravitated to the Republican Party, where they sought to cement the GOP's attachment to welfare and especially warfare. As Max Boot admits: "It is not really domestic policy that defines neo-conservatism. This was a movement founded on foreign policy, and it is still here that neo-conservatism carries the greatest meaning, even if its original raison d'�tre � opposition to communism � has disappeared."

Now, it would be wrong to say that the neoconservatives had not undergone any kind of intellectual change. They became less enamored of formal socialism and more at home with mixed-economy capitalism. They grew to hate much of the egalitarian-left cultural agenda of Democratic Party special-interest groups. Many of them wrote treatises decrying the excesses of their ex-brethren. But the transformation was never complete, and the core of their ideology never changed: these people had then and have now a remarkable faith in the uses of state power, at home and abroad. Their intellectual formation in Straussianism convinced them of the centrality of the elite management of society by philosophers, and their background in Trotskyite organizing kept a ruthless political strategy as the operating mode.

As David Gordon sums up Rothbard's early analysis: "As Strauss sees matters, classical and Christian natural law did not impose strict and absolute limits on state power; instead, all is left to the prudential judgment of the wise statesman." The younger generation absorbed this tendency as much as the old. Thus with neoconservatism, we have the statist aspects of the old conservatism minus the libertarian aspects that led the old conservatives to favor decentralist political institutions and free enterprise. Add to that the natural tendency of anyone in power to use the tools they have at their disposal. What we end up with is a danger to liberty as fierce as any ever posed by the left.

But by the standard of loving Leviathan, today's neo-conservatism is worse than every brand of conservatism that preceded it. It is worse than Reaganism, which included some libertarian impulses, and worse than National-Review-style conservatism from the 1960s and 1950s. One expects pro-state affections from socialists, but the puzzle of neo-conservatism is how it could exist within a group of self-professed non-socialists who even claim to despise what the collectivist left has done to the world. Thus the great fallacy of neo-conservatism is the one that afflicts all non-libertarian ideologies: they believe that society can be managed by the state in both its political and economic life. They believe this to a lesser extent than some left socialists, but to a far greater extent than most thinkers on the right.

What they miss or do not want to face is precisely what the socialists never wanted to accept: that society is made up of acting, choosing human beings with their own values and ideas and plans, and it is they and not the state who do the hard work of creating civilization, a creation that is easy to destroy through statist means but impossible to rebuild through such means; that many social forces like culture and economics are beyond the final control of state power; and in the long run, it is people, and not philosopher kings whispering in the ears of gullible statesmen, who will determine the course of history.

Source: http://www.lewrockwell.com/rockwell/...explained.html

**Armenian** · 10-27-2007, 03:33 PM

Re: The American Century: Neoconservatism

NEOCONS IN DENIAL

It's a 'conspiracy theory' to blame neocons for the war � even though they spent the last decade agitating for it

One of the major accomplishments of this site, aside from keeping our readers up-to-the-minute on what's really happening in Iraq, has been to educate the public about who brought us this war, and why. We have held, from the beginning, that war on Iraq did not and does not serve American interests, and we have traced its origins back to a group of determined ideologues who see it as the first phase of a campaign to take America on the road to Empire. Ideas, not guns, rule the world, and the ideology espoused by the neoconservatives has been consistent, and relentlessly advanced since the first days of the post-cold war era. It boils down to this: war, war, and yet more war. Their goal � "benevolent global hegemony" exercised by the U.S.

These ex-leftists and former Scoop Jackson Democrats were agitating for war against Iraq � and most of the rest of the Middle East � well before 9/11. The debris from that horrific disaster hadn't even stopped smoldering when top neocons in this administration targeted Iraq � not Osama Bin Laden's Al Qaeda � as a target of opportunity they could not afford to miss. Now they stand on the verge of fulfilling their dream: a U.S.-imposed military occupation of Iraq to be followed by interventions in Syria, Iran, Saudi Arabia, and throughout the Middle East. It is the very scenario envisioned in "A Clean Break: A New Strategy for Securing the Realm," the infamous memo written for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu by Richard Perle, James Colbert, Charles Fairbanks, Jr., Douglas Feith, Robert Loewenberg, David Wurmser, and Meyrav Wurmser. In this seminal document, the invasion of Iraq is prefigured, along with a campaign to "roll back" Syria:

"Israel can shape its strategic environment, in cooperation with Turkey and Jordan, by weakening, containing, and even rolling back Syria. This effort can focus on removing Saddam Hussein from power in Iraq � an important Israeli strategic objective in its own right � as a means of foiling Syria's regional ambitions. Jordan has challenged Syria's regional ambitions recently by suggesting the restoration of the Hashemites in Iraq."

This is precisely what is happening today. The only difference is that the agent of rollback is not the IDF, but the U.S. military. With U.S. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld openly threatening Syria, the idea that the road to Damascus runs through Baghdad clearly has spread far beyond its progenitors. The war in Iraq, as Professor Paul W. Schroeder pointed out in The American Conservative, "Would represent something to my knowledge unique in history. It is common for great powers to try to fight wars by proxy, getting smaller powers to fight for their interests. This would be the first instance I know where a great power (in fact, a superpower) would do the fighting as the proxy of a small client state."

That "small client state" is, of course, Israel, the Middle Eastern Sparta that enjoys the same kind of knee-jerk support among some sections of the American right that the former Soviet Union once commanded on the radical left. If the core principle of constant warfare is the essence of the neoconservative doctrine, then the object of their special adulation is the state of Israel, whose interests they have openly advanced over and above the best interests of the U.S. When Ariel Sharon compared George W. Bush to Neville Chamberlain, Bill Bennett, neoconservative scold and head of "Americans for Victory Over Terrorism" (AVOT), agreed with him. Since 9/11, the neocons have been pushing the line that the interests of the U.S. and Israel are identical � a logical impossibility, since the national interests of separate states are different by definition. Unleashed by 9/11, neoconservative publicists have been calling for "World War IV," a "clash of civilizations" pitting the U.S. and Israel against the Muslim world � and a good deal of the rest of the world.

All of this history of ceaseless warmongering on the part of the neocons is a matter of record: just follow the links in this column. Or, better yet, read up on the subject, starting with my (sadly out of print) book, Reclaiming the American Right: The Lost Legacy of the Conservative Movement, which tells the story of the neocons' ideological odyssey from left to faux-"right". The meme of neocon responsibility for this war and future wars is by now spread far and wide: just go to Google.com (news) and type in the word "neoconservatives" or "neocons," and you'll see what I mean. But now along comes the learned Robert J. Lieber, Professor of Government and Foreign Service at Georgetown University, and a leading academic apologist for the Bush Doctrine of preemption and American primacy, to tell us that this is a "myth" promulgated by bigots. In the April 29 issue of The Chronicle of Higher Education (and reprinted by Frontpagemag.com), Lieber writes:

"The ruins of Saddam Hussein's shattered tyranny may provide additional evidence of chemical weapons and other weapons of mass destruction, but one poisonous by-product has already begun to seep from under the rubble. It is a conspiracy theory purporting to explain how the foreign policy of the world's greatest power, the United States, has been captured by a sinister and hitherto little-known cabal.

"A small band of neoconservative (read, xxxish) defense intellectuals, led by the 'mastermind,' Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz (according to Michael Lind, writing in the New Statesman), has taken advantage of 9/11 to put their ideas over on an ignorant, inexperienced, and 'easily manipulated' president (Eric Alterman in The Nation), his 'elderly figurehead' Defense Secretary (as Lind put it), and the 'dutiful servant of power' who is our secretary of state (Edward Said, London Review of Books)."

But why must we "read xxxish" when the word is neoconservative? While it is true that many prominent neocons are xxxish, the same might be said of libertarians (Murray Rothbard, Ludwig von Mises, Ayn Rand), or left-wing radicals (Noam Chomsky, Rabbi Michael Lerner,), or, for that matter, liberals. What of it? Undeterred by logic, however, Professor Lieber blithely continues along this same victimological path throughout his essay. This "conspiracy theory," he avers, is itself a conspiracy against � the xxxs! Somebody please call the PC Thought Police! So where's the evidence of a neo-Nazi plot involving leading liberal and conservative writers and intellectuals? The Professor detects a pattern of anti-Semitic rhetoric between the lines of anti-interventionist polemics: "Thus empowered, this neoconservative conspiracy, 'a product of the influential xxxish-American faction of the Trotskyist movement of the '30s and '40s' (Lind), with its own 'fanatic' and 'totalitarian morality' (William Pfaff, International Herald Tribune) has fomented war with Iraq � not in the interest of the United States, but in the service of Israel's Likud government (Patrick J. Buchanan and Alterman)."

That Alterman is xxxish is apparently no obstacle to his membership in this anti-Semitic cabal. Aside from this odd anomaly, Lind's reference to the "xxxish-American faction of the Trotskyist movement of the '30s and '40s" is a redundancy: of the three founders of American Trotskyism, two were xxxish and the membership of their party reflected the leadership: their base was in the heavily xxxish sections of New York City, where more than half the members lived. This is not an admonishment on Lind's part, but only a descriptive passage. Lieber's brief, out-of-context quotes are typical of the modern "academic" method of footnoted character assassination, but if you examine what Lind actually wrote, it is clear that his purpose is not to target "the xxxs" but to accurately describe the intellectual and political genesis of a war. This war, averred Lind, was the dream of neoconservative theoreticians, paid experts who advised the Israeli government while out of power during the Clinton years and evolved a plan to further their ambitions. But, he wrote,

"Such experts are not typical of xxxish-Americans, who mostly voted for Gore in 2000. The most fervent supporters of Likud in the Republican electorate are Southern Protestant fundamentalists."

The imputation of base motives to Lind is based on a very selective reading of his piece. Professor Lieber is clearly counting on his students not doing their homework. His are willful misrepresentations. Out of a dozen words cited in Lind's piece, Lieber focuses on the wrong one. It wasn't their xxxishness that impelled the neocons to develop an ideology � and implement a national security strategy � based on military domination of the globe. Their Trotskyist mindset, shorn of its Soviet roots, morphed easily into a "permanent revolution" on behalf of an American rather than a socialist world order. Trotsky believed that socialism in one country could not long survive, and the duty of every revolutionary was to spread Communism beyond the borders of the workers' fatherland, by military means if necessary, a task regularly shirked by the Stalinist sell-outs in the Kremlin.

Trotsky's American ex-followers, such as Max Shachtman, decided that the Stalinists were even worse than the capitalists, and that the Soviet Union, far from being the workers fatherland, represented the main danger to the working class � a position that eventually had him and his influential followers supporting the U.S. war against Vietnam. That this is the organizational and intellectual pre-history of the neoconservatives is beyond dispute. Neocon godfather Irving Kristol was a Trotskyist, eventually winding up as a member of the Shachtman group, as were several other prominent New York intellectuals who followed Shachtman on his rightward course � sometimes lagging behind, sometimes skipping ahead � and finally crossing over to the right, in the cold war era, to make up the intellectual core of the War Party. Neoconservatism in the realm of foreign policy is merely Trotskyism-turned-inside-out � a militant internationalism fueled by U.S. taxpayer dollars and backed up by the mightiest military the world has ever seen.

The neoconservative fealty to Israel surely has something to do with the ethnic and religious loyalties of some prominent neocons, whose faith in Marxism was replaced by their rediscovery of their religious and ethnic roots. But it has just as much to do with Israel's role as a modern Sparta, a militaristic state which the neocons view as inherently admirable. However, surely the most numerous and fervent fans of the state of Israel in the American body politic are the "mainstream" conservatives, who generally agree with what they read in, say, National Review. For them, Israel, our staunch ally during the cold war, is an outpost of Western civilization, and deserves support on that basis alone. A great many conservative Republican activists are Christian fundamentalists whose unconditional support for Ariel Sharon's draconian policies is based on their peculiar interpretation of Christianity, not Judaism.

Lieber goes on to make the most of his examination of anti-Semitic "tropes," reducing the analysis of well-known liberal analysts to "conspicuous manifestations of classic anti-Semitism." What are these ominous portents of a new pogrom? According to the Professor, they consist of: "Claims that a small, all-powerful but little-known group or 'cabal' of xxxish masterminds is secretly manipulating policy."

None of the individuals cited by Lieber, nor anyone else that I am aware of, is saying that the nation was "secretly" roped into war: it was all done quite openly, which, on account of its sheer brazenness, makes it all the more outrageous. The neocons wrote manifestos in their subsidized little journals, they signed open letters urging an invasion of this country or that, they wrote op ed pieces and their front groups lobbied Congress and the American public � which is why it has been possible for Lind, Alterman, Buchanan, myself, and others to write about it. Nor is anyone claiming that the "cabal," which I call the War Party, is "all-powerful." If that were true, then surely they would have achieved their objectives sooner, with less exposure and certainly with very little debate.

"That they have dual loyalty to a foreign power."

This is not a question of dual loyalty, but of the subordination of American interests to Israeli policy objectives � and to an inherently anti-American policy of naked imperialism that goes against the grain of our history and our political culture. Critics of U.S. policy in the Middle East, except for the Marxists and the inveterate anti-Americans, argue that allowing our military to be used as a cat's-paw for Israel is not in American interests. It is a policy that can only please the region's extremists: Ariel Sharon and Osama bin Laden. The neocons, on the other hand, fail to distinguish between Israeli and American interests, and one has to assume that this is a sincerely held belief.

The Professor continues his litany of "anti-Semitic" horrors: "That this cabal combines ideological opposites (right-wingers with a Trotskyist legacy, echoing classic anti-Semitic tropes linking xxxs to both international capitalism and international communism)." Since most neocons and their supporters are not xxxish � as Lieber spends an inordinate number of words pointing out � his contention that the whole thing amounts to an orgy of xxx-bashing, an intellectual Kristallnacht, is self-refuting. Aside from that, however, does he really mean to imply that xxxish ex-Trotskyists are above criticism, all on account of some arcane "trope"?

"That our official leaders are too ignorant, weak, or naive to grasp what is happening." Yes, as we all know, our leaders are never ignorant, or weak, or na�ve. They always grasp what is happening. "That the foreign policy upon which our country is now embarked runs counter to, or is even subversive of, American national interest."

[...]

Source: http://www.antiwar.com/justin/j043003.html

**Armenian** · 10-27-2007, 03:41 PM

Re: The American Century: Neoconservatism

The Master Plan for the World and its effect on Resource Stocks

When you understand how the recent attack on Lebanon fits into the "Grand Plan" for the Middle East, you have an immediate and substantial advantage over other investors in the Energy and Precious Metals sectors.

In order to comprehend what is going on in the Middle East and in the wider world for that matter it is necessary to have a grasp of certain realities. For reasons which we will not go into here, the countries of Israel, the United Kingdom and the United States constitute an "Axis", and they will hereafter be referred to as "The Axis". The elites who control these countries are one and the same, they have identical objectives and move as one. This is not to say, however, that these same elites don't control or partially control many other countries, they do, of course, as they also control many world bodies such as the United Nations, which they have effectively neutered and reduced to a costly talking shop. But their "centre of gravity", their "home turf" is clearly these three countries.

The UK has an interesting geopolitical role to play within the Axis power bloc. One of its main functions is to serve as the Loyal Lieutenant of the United States, and so give much needed credibility to the latter's policies and actions. Thus, when the United States forces invaded Iraq, the addition of forces from sidekick Britain, and token support from a ragbag of relatively minor states such as Australia and Poland trying to curry favor with the Axis, enabled CNN to label the invading force "The Coalition", a term used probably thousands of times in the weeks and months that followed, and which, from a propaganda perspective, sounds a whole lot better than "The US Invasion Force".

[...]

So, what are the prime objectives of the elites within The Axis? One objective is to achieve complete control over their own populations, in a manner that enables them to concentrate as much power and wealth into their own hands as possible. Another objective is the creation of a world government, so that they can exercise control not just over a group of countries, but the whole world. It would appear that these particular elites have not infiltrated and do not control up-and-coming countries such as China, India and Russia, who could conceivably constitute an opposing power bloc, therefore these countries will have to be initially contained before later being forced to kneel before the might of The Axis.

This at least partially explains three things that are otherwise inexplicable - the gargantuan US "defense" budget, which after the end of the cold war should have contracted, not expanded, thus yielding a "peace dividend" for US taxpayers, the astonishing proliferation of US military bases across the Middle East and Central Asia, and finally the rolling takeover of the Middle East. Ordinary voters within the Axis countries clearly would not accept or condone the actions of the elites if they knew the real reasons for them, and might get rebellious, hence the need to invent a story which they can believe in - "The War on Terror", which is a smokescreen of cartoon book simplicity, which is what the masses need, as they are unable to grasp complex concepts.

The term "War on Terror" is itself ludicrous and is clearly a crude slogan designed to appeal to the masses. The attacks on September 11th 2001 served three principal purposes - they enabled the rolling takeover of the Middle East to get underway in earnest, starting with Afghanistan and moving on to Iraq, under cover of The War on Terror, and they enabled the passing of The Patriot Acts, which have turned the Constitution of the United States into nothing more than an interesting historical document. These Acts have created a full blown Police State in waiting. One more major "terrorist" attack and the numerous draconian clauses lying dormant within these Acts can be invoked and a state of Martial Law may be declared at will. "Holding Centers" for dissenters have been under construction across the United States for some time, for the benefit of those whose views do not concur with those of their rulers. The borders can be sealed instantly, unless you fancy strolling over into Mexico, that is. The third main "benefit" is that they allowed more power and wealth to be channeled to the voracious Military-Industrial complex.

The United States is an unusual country in that it does not have a government in the normal sense of the word. This is because many politicians who ostensibly represent the people are primarily answerable to, and therefore controlled by, the big business interests who ultimately determine their fate. These interests are collectively known as the Military-Industrial complex and this power grid is the effective government of the United States. The Defense, Oil and Pharmaceutical lobbies in particular have immense power in Washington. This state of affairs explains why the food supply in the United States is adulterated with genetically modified crops and harmful additives such as Aspartame, and other substances that promote obesity.

[...]

This is the underlying reason for the interrogation and torture of prisoners, and for the recent pulverizing of Lebanon by Axis forces emanating from Israel. The elites within the Axis powers, who, to whatever extent they are religious, are either Christians or Zionists, view Arabs and Muslims in the same way that a gardener regards ants or termites - at best as an irrelevance to be tolerated, perhaps utilized as a source of slave labor, and at worst as a pest to be exterminated. When you understand this point you can readily appreciate why the Axis powers would be quite happy to foment an inter-Arab war, Shiites versus Sunnis, for example, and then stand back and watch with satisfaction as they wipe each other out - as long as they don't damage the oilfields. Not that they have much more respect for citizens in their own countries, who they broadly class into two groups. One is civilians who are farmed for their labor and tax revenue; the working classes of course, but also the broad swath of the middle class, the stewards of the system, who like to think that they are in control of their own lives, but are in reality just operatives for the elites. The other group is military personnel who are the unwitting henchmen that do their dirty work in far flung lands, putting their lives on the line to serve their master's geopolitical ambitions.

Dr Josef Goebbels, the godfather of propaganda, who was head of propaganda in Nazi Germany in the 30�s, would have thought he had woken up in heaven, had he found himself suddenly transposed to being in charge of the Axis propaganda machine in our times. The greatest mind control machine in the history of the human race, the television set, is to be found in virtually every home in the developed world, sometimes several of them, and the people weren't forced to accept them, they went out and bought them of their own accord. The seductive allure of the screen is much more attractive to most than the effort involved in reading. Nowadays the television is the main source of information for the vast majority of the population - if you can gain control of its throughput you can control the minds of the masses.

In the United States, almost all Newspaper and Television stations are controlled from above by the process of syndication, which means there is in effect no such thing as an independent local press. A pyramidal structure controls editorial policy and any reporter who steps out of line by not adhering to editorial policy will find his chances of promotion blocked, and if he persists, will suddenly find himself with plenty of time for gardening. This is why, although complicity by various elements within the government in the attacks of 11th September 2001 is glaringly obvious, you won't find much serious questioning of the episode in the mainstream press. The plentiful evidence that it was an "inside job", such as Norad, the air defense network, being stood down to allow the attacks to proceed, the sequenced detonations within the Twin Towers that brought them down, the thermite used to melt the steel to guarantee the towers would collapse, the complete collapse of WTC7 many hours later, although it was relatively untouched by debris - this building was used as the command and control center for the entire operation, and was brought down to destroy the evidence, and was also heavily insured by its new owner before it was destroyed, the airline Put option scam, the rapid and systematic destruction of evidence at Ground Zero, all of this is covered in detail on various websites devoted to the truth of what went on at that time. Despite the mainstream media coverup, surveys reveal that 30% of US citizens believe that the government had a hand in the attacks, and this figure is rising all the time.

This must be worrying for the perpetrators, who could face impeachment and a firing squad if the truth became more widely known, and it is a reason that they are thought to be contemplating another "spectacular", to rally the majority behind them and drive opponents and disbelievers into the shadows - and also to invoke the draconian clauses lying in wait in the Patriot Acts, one of which is that if you oppose them you are a terrorist and can simply vanish, never to be heard of again. Many years ago, if the population at large realized that elements within the government had murdered 3,000 of their fellow citizens in this way, they would have marched on Washington, dragged the perpetrators out of their lairs, and strung them up from the nearest lamp posts, but this is not considered possible these days, even if the majority do realize it, because after many years sat on comfy sofas watching the television, people just don't have the stomach for it. That might change, however, if the sofa and TV set suddenly vanish.

In the intervening years since 11th September 2001 there have been various other "terrorist" attacks; the Bali bombing, which killed about 200 people, many of whom were Australian tourists, was intended to ensure Australia's full commitment to The War on Terror, and was a successful operation. The Madrid train bombings backfired (this is not an attempt at humor). The intention was to ensure the re-election of Jose Aznar, an ally of Bush committed to The War on Terror, in the upcoming Spanish general election, and it was assumed that the people would want to re-elect a candidate who was strongly aligned with the US and The War on Terror after the bombings, but instead the electorate blamed Aznar for aligning himself with Bush and thus making them a target, and threw him out. The London bombings, on the other hand were a complete success, as they swept Tony Blair, who had been flagging in the polls, back into power in the election soon after.

Having outlined the general context, we will now return to the central theme of this article, which is how the recent attack on Lebanon fits within the Grand Plan for the Middle East and the implications for the prices of Precious Metals and Oil going forward.

The Axis powers have had big plans for the Middle East for a long time, for the obvious reason that they have coveted control of the immense oil wealth contained within the region, and the power that complete possession of this resource would bestow. These plans predate the September 11th 2001 attacks by many years, although it was these attacks that acted as a catalyst, enabling the Middle East takeover juggernaut to move up swiftly through the gears. With respect to these plans the creation of the state of Israel can almost be described as the creation of an Axis "bridgehead" in the region. After the September 11th attacks, the outraged public were baying for blood, and quickly swallowed the Al Queida/Osama bin Laden story, which gave them a focus for their wrath, and were heartened by the swift invasion of Afghanistan.

[...]

So, how does the attack on Lebanon fit into all this? You may recall that the reason cited for pulverizing Lebanon was that Hezbollah had captured two Israeli soldiers. This was obviously a very poor excuse, but the emboldened Axis elites, who control the syndicated global media, no longer feel the need to make up a convincing excuse for anything. Now for the real reasons. Some of you will recall that, about a year ago, Syrian troops were pressured out of Lebanon. This was a preparatory move, designed to make the premeditated attack on Lebanon go more smoothly. Now, we know that an ultimate goal of the Axis powers in the Middle East is to overrun Iran, or at least neutralize and subjugate it. Without the attack on Hezbollah and Lebanon of the past few weeks, any attack on Iran would obviously have resulted in a hail of Hezbollah rockets raining down on northern Israel, as Hezbollah in southern Lebanon has been a kind of "front line" for Iran.

Axis military planners have clearly calculated that the damage caused by Hezbollah rockets and missiles would be considerably reduced in conditions where they were under attack from Israel, rather than if Axis forces attacked Iran, and then unmolested Hezbollah forces launched a sideswipe against northern Israel. For this reason, in preparation for the assault on Iran, Axis strategists have decided to "take the sting out of Hezbollah" and let northern Israel "take the heat now", rather than leave them with a full arsenal when the time comes to go after Iran. Israel has aimed to inflict as much damage as possible on Hezbollah, and is actually glad that they are firing many rockets into northern Israel, as this depletes their inventory. It is true that many Lebanese civilians have been killed and made homeless by these attacks, but in the eyes of Axis planners this was justified as the target was Hezbollah fighters, and if these civilians happened to be too close to them, that was their misfortune - they are expendable, as are ordinary US soldiers in Iraq. Furthermore, the pulverizing of Lebanon was designed to demonstrate to the world at large and the Arab world in particular the ruthless might of the Axis, and to further foment polarization - to incense and outrage the Arab world and thus raise their profile as an enemy.

[...]

Source: http://www.safehaven.com/article-5986.htm

**Armenian** · 10-27-2007, 03:49 PM

Re: The American Century: Neoconservatism

Irving Kristol

Widely referred to as the "godfather" of neoconservatism, Mr. Kristol was part of the "New York Intellectuals," a group of critics mainly of Eastern European xxxish descent. In the late 1930s, he studied at City College of New York where he became a Trotskyist. From 1947 to 1952, he was the managing editor of Commentary magazine, later called the "neocon bible." By the late 1960s, Kristol had shifted from left to right on the political spectrum, due partly to what he considered excesses and anti-Americanism among liberals. Kristol built the intellectual framework of neoconservatism, founding and editing journals such as The Public Interest and The National Interest. Kristol is a fellow at the American Enterprise Institute and author of numerous books, including "Neoconservatism: The Autobiography of an Idea." He is the father of Weekly Standard editor and oft-quoted neoconservative William Kristol.

Norman Podhoretz

Considered one of neoconservatism's founding fathers, Mr. Podhoretz studies, writes, and speaks on social, cultural, and international matters. From 1990 to 1995, he worked as editor-in-chief of Commentary magazine, a neoconservative journal published by the American xxxish Committee. Podhoretz advocated liberal political views earlier in life, but broke ranks in the early 1970s. He became part of the Coalition for a Democratic Majority founded in 1973 by Senator Henry "Scoop" Jackson and other intervention-oriented Democrats. Podhoretz has written nine books, including "Breaking Ranks" (1979), in which he argues that Israel's survival is crucial to US military strategy. He is married to like-minded social critic Midge Decter. They helped establish the Committee on the Present Danger in the late 1970s and the Committee for the Free World in the early 1980s. Podhoretz' son, John, is a New York Post columnist.

Paul Wolfowitz

After serving as deputy secretary of defense for three years, Mr. Wolfowitz, a key architect of the Iraq war, was chosen in March 2005 by President Bush to be president of the World Bank. From 1989 to 1993, Wolfowitz served as under secretary of defense for policy in charge of a 700-person team that had major responsibilies for the reshaping of military strategy and policy at the end of the cold war. In this capacity Wolfowitz co-wrote with Lewis "Scooter" Libby the 1992 draft Defense Planning Guidance, which called for US military dominance over Eurasia and preemptive strikes against countries suspected of developing weapons of mass destruction. After being leaked to the media, the draft proved so shocking that it had to be substantially rewritten. After 9/11, many of the principles in that draft became key points in the 2002 National Security Strategy of the United States, an annual report. During the 1991 Gulf War, Wolfowitz advocated extending the war's aim to include toppling Saddam Hussein's regime.

Richard Perle

Famously nicknamed the "Prince of Darkness" for his hardline stance on national security issues, Mr. Perle is one of the most high-profile neoconservatives. He resigned in March 2003 as chairman of the Pentagon's Defense Policy Board after being criticized for conflicts of interest. From 1981 to 1987 he was assistant secretary of defense for international security policy. Perle is a chief architect of the "creative destruction" agenda to reshape the Middle East, starting with the invasion of Iraq. He outlined parts of this agenda in a key 1996 report for Israel's right-wing Likud Party called "A Clean Break: A New Strategy for Securing the Realm." Perle helped establish two think tanks: The Center for Security Policy and The xxxish Institute for National Security. He is also a fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, an adviser for the counter-terrorist think tank Foundation for the Defense of Democracies, and a director of the Jerusalem Post.

Douglas Feith

The defense department announced in January 2005 that Mr. Feith will resign this summer as undersecretary of defense for policy, the Pentagon's No. 3 civilian position, which he has held since being appointed by President Bush in July 2001. Feith also served in the Reagan administration as deputy assistant secretary of defense for negotiations policy. Prior to that, he served as special counsel to Richard Perle. Before his service at the Pentagon, Feith worked as a Middle East specialist for the National Security Council in 1981-82. Feith is well-known for his support of Israel's right-wing Likud Party. In 1997, Feith was honored along with his father Dalck Feith, who was active in a Zionist youth movement in his native Poland, for their "service to Israel and the xxxish people" by pro-Likud Zionist Organization of America at its 100th anniversary banquet. In 1992, he was vice president of the advisory board of the xxxish Institute for National Security Affairs. Mr. Feith is a former chairman and currently a director of the Center for Security Policy.

Lewis "Scooter" Libby

Mr. Libby is currently chief of staff and national security advisor for Vice President xxxx Cheney. He's served in a wide variety of posts. In the first Bush administration, Mr. Libby served in the Department of Principal Deputy Under Secretary (Strategy and Resources), and, later, as Deputy Under Secretary of Defense for Policy. Libby was a founding member of the Project for the New American Century. He joined Paul Wolfowitz, William Kristol, Robert Kagan, and others in writing its 2000 report entitled, "Rebuilding America's Defenses - Strategy, Forces, and Resources for a New Century." Libby co-authored the once-shocking draft of the 'Defense Planning Guidance' with Mr. Wolfowitz for then-Defense Secretary xxxx Cheney in 1992. Libby serves on the advisory board of the Center for Russian and Eurasian Studies of the RAND Corporation.

John Bolton

In February 2005, Mr. Bolton was nominated US ambassador to the UN by President Bush. If confirmed, he would move to this position from the Department of State where he was Under Secretary for Arms Control, the top US non-proliferation official. Prior to this appointment, Bolton was senior vice president of the neoconservative think tank American Enterprise Institute. He also held a variety of positions in both the George H. W. Bush and Ronald Reagan administrations. Bolton has often made claims not fully supported by the intelligence community. In a controversial May 2002 speech entitled, "Beyond the Axis of Evil," Bolton fingered Libya, Syria, and Cuba as "other rogue states intent on acquiring weapons of mass destruction." In July 2003, the CIA and other agencies reportedly objected strongly to claims Bolton made in a draft assessment about the progress Syria has made in its weapons programs.

Elliott Abrams

In February of 2005 Elliott Abrams was appointed deputy assistant to the president and deputy national security adviser for global democracy strategy. From December 2002 to February 2005, Mr. Abrams served as special assistant to the president and senior director for Near East and North African affairs. Abrams began his political career by taking a job with the Democratic Senator Henry M. "Scoop" Jackson. He held a variety of State Department posts in the Reagan administration. He was a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute from 1990 to the 1996 before becoming president of the Ethics and Public Policy Center, which "affirms the political relevance of the great Western ethical imperatives." Abrams also served as chairman of the US Commission on International Religious Freedom. In 1991, Abrams pleaded guilty to withholding information from Congress about the Iran-Contra affair. President George H. W. Bush pardoned him in 1992. In 1980, he married Rachel Decter, daughter of neocon veterans Norman Podhoretz and Midge Decter.

Robert Kagan

Mr. Kagan writes extensively on US strategy and diplomacy. Kagan and fellow neoconservative William Kristol co-founded the Project for a New American Century (PNAC) in 1997. Kagan signed the famous 1998 PNAC letter sent to President Clinton urging regime change in Iraq. After working as principal speechwriter to Secretary of State George P. Shultz from 1984-1985, he was hired by Elliott Abrams to work as deputy for policy in the State Department's Bureau of Inter-American Affairs. He is a senior associate at the Carnegie endowment for International Peace (CEIP). He is also an international affairs columnist for The Washington Post, and contributing editor at The New Republic and The Weekly Standard. He wrote the bestseller "Of Paradise and Power: America and Europe in the New World Order." Kagan's wife, Victoria Nuland, was chosen by Vice President xxxx Cheney as his deputy national security adviser.

Michael Ledeen

Seen by many as one of the most radical neoconservatives, Mr. Ledeen is said to frequently advise George W. Bush's top adviser Karl Rove on foreign policy matters. He is one of the strongest voices calling for regime change in Iran. In 2001, Ledeen co-founded the Coalition for Democracy in Iran. He served as Secretary of State Alexander Haig's adviser during the Reagan administration. Ledeen is resident scholar in the Freedom Chair at the American Enterprise Institute, where he works closely with Richard Perle. he is also a member of the xxxish Institute of National Security Affairs' advisory board and one of its founding organizers. He was Rome correspondent for the New Republic magazine from 1975-1977, and founding editor of the Washington Quarterly. Ledeen also wrote "The War Against the Terror Masters," which advocates regime change in Iraq, Syria, and Saudi Arabia.

William Kristol

Son of "godfather" of neoconservatism Irving Kristol, Bill Kristol is currently chairman of the Project for a New American Century, which he co-founded with leading neoconservative writer Robert Kagan. He is also editor of the influential Weekly Standard. Like other neoconservatives Frank Gaffney Jr. and Elliott Abrams, Kristol worked for hawkish Democratic Sen. Henry "Scoop" Jackson. But by 1976, he became a Republican. he served as chief of staff to Education Secretary William Bennett during the Reagan administration and chief of staff to former Vice President Dan Quayle during the George H. W. Bush presidency. Kristol continuously called for Saddam Hussein's ouster since the 1991 Gulf War. With the like-minded Lawrence Kaplan, Kristol co-wrote "The War Over Iraq: Saddam's Tyranny and America's Mission." He is on the board of advisers of the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies, established as a counterterrorist think tank after 9/11.

Frank Gaffney Jr.

Mr. Gaffney is the founder, president, and CEO of the influential Washington think tank Center for Security Policy, whose mission is "to promote world peace through American strength." In 1987, President Reagan nominated Gaffney to be assistant secretary of defense for international security policy. he earlier served as the Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Nuclear Forces and Arms Control Policy under then-Assistant Secretary Richard Perle. In the late 1970s, Gaffney served as a defense and foreign policy adviser to Sen. Henry "Scoop" Jackson. He is columnist for the Washington Times and a contributor to Defense News and Investor's Business Daily. He is a contributing editor to National Review Online, WolrdNetDaily.com and xxxishWorldReview.com. Gaffney is also one of 25 mostly neoconservative co-signers of the Project for a New American Century's Statement of Principles.

Source: http://www.csmonitor.com/specials/neocon/index.html

**Armenian** · 10-27-2007, 04:00 PM

Re: The American Century: Neoconservatism

Stop the Neocons from Digging our Graves!

"Time's glory is to...unmask falsehood and bring truth to light...To wrong the wronger till he render right." - William Shakespeare

A few months ago, I was in Washington, D.C., working as an extra in a movie. Hollywood loves to shoot films in the nation�s Capital because of its ambiance. Robert De Niro, a brilliant actor, was directing the flick called, �The Good Shepherd.� It has to do with the origins of the CIA. (1) In any event, when I was on a break in Georgetown, where they were filming, I got a chance to walk into a local store. The TV was on. There on the screen was Neocon, William Kristol, his head looking larger than ever. (2) He was blabbing away about some supposed �present danger� or another that the country faces. I wanted to take my shoe off and toss it at the set. Here�s, Kristol, a rabid warmonger and fear merchant, who, with others, helped push this country into the unjust, illegal and immoral Iraqi War. (3) Yet, as Jeffrey Blankfort, correctly pointed out: because the Neocons and the Israeli Lobby have "paid no price for it [their Iraqi warmongering]...They are preparing to do the same with Iran.� (4) In light of the recently published Harvard Study on the enormous influence over U.S. policies of the Israeli Lobby, (which includes the cunning Neocons), Blankfort's opinion was validated. (5)

Unfortunately, Iran isn't the end of it. Russia is now being put on the defensive, too, by the War Hawks. While attending a conference in Vilnius, Lithuania, on May 4, 2006, the ultra-Neocon, xxxx Cheney, accused Vladimir Putin's Russia of "unfairly and improperly" restricting the rights of its people and of using oil and gas as "tools of intimidation or blackmail" against neighboring countries. "Russia has a choice to make," Cheney barked menacingly. (6) Whether his crack about �restricting the rights of its people,� had anything to do with pressuring the Kremlin to relax the stiff punishments meted out to the Zionist Oligarchs, like Mikhail Khodorkovsky, who were caught attempting to loot the country, is anyone�s guess. Trillions of rubles may have be been stolen by this grasping clique, according to former Russian Premier, Mikhail Gorbachev. (7) The idea, too, that Cheney, a serial shredder of the U.S. Constitution, and a crony of Jack Abramoff, Halliburton and "Big Oil," publicly lecturing the Russians on the meaning of "democracy" is truly laughable. If there were any justice on this planet, Cheney would be in the dock as a defendant, along with George W. Bush Jr., at the World Court, for his role in unlawfully invading and destroying the nation of Iraq.

Pundit Jim Lobe, in covering Cheney's rant, revealed how another Neocon, Robert Kagan, is pushing a similar get-tough line on Russia. Kagan's wife, Victoria Nuland, Lobe said, once worked as Cheney's deputy national security advisor. She is now the U.S. Ambassador to NATO. Of course, Irving "Scooter" Libby was in Cheney's office, too. Doesn't all of this make you wonder: Who has been representing the interests of the vast majority of the American people in the White House for the last six years?

Incredibly, Noam Chomsky, a leading Left ideologue, continues to blame "Imperialism," which may have some analytical relevance, instead of focusing on the Neocons and the Israeli Lobby for their roles in getting us into the war. (8) If a mugger were loose in the neighborhood, it wouldn't make any sense to indict "Poverty" for his offenses. He needs to be captured and punished for his deeds, otherwise he will simply repeat his crimes. It's the same with the Iraqi War. If you stick to the particulars, you can easily find out the names of the individuals, and groups, who instigated this war, which was based on lies, (9) and also, hopefully, prevent them from starting another one. (10) However, the underlining question still remains: Who is running America? (11)

Kagan accused Russia, and China, too, of being "protectors of an informal league of dictators." Naturally, Iran is in that group, along with Venezuela, whose feisty leader, Hugo Chavez, has told the Bush-Cheney Gang to take a hike. Lobe underscored how the warmongering Kagan was the cofounder of the Zionist-dominated "Project for the New American Century," (PNAC), along with Kristol, who is the editor of the "Weekly Standard," a right wing rag funded by media mogul, Rupert Murdock. Kagan insisted that "Al-Qaeda may not be the only challenge liberalism faces today, or even the greatest." Lobe believes that the real reasons for the recent verbal assaults on Russia and China is that they are the "two biggest obstacles to Washington's (and Israel's, too, in my opinion) drive to impose U.N. Security sanction against Iran, the administration's current top foreign policy priority." He cautioned that such a Russia/China bashing policy, also "risks driving them further together in opposition to U.S. geo-strategic designs, particularly isolating Iran and asserting more control over the flow of oil and gas out of Central Asia and the Caucasus." (12)

Getting back to Kristol. I'm sure he likes it when critics of the Iraqi War blame an abstraction for the blood stained conflict. Why not? It gives him and his fellow Neocons "a pass." Meanwhile, the Israelis have extracted $140 billion from our treasury, since 1948; murderously assaulted the USS Liberty in 1967; bulldozed Rachel Corrie to death in 2003; cheered and "danced" when the WTC collapsed; and continue to oppress the Palestinians and to make more enemies for America. Yet, some apologists still insist that Zionist Israel is acting as "our" agent in the Middle East. When Kristol made an appearance on "The Colbert Report," on April 29, 2006, he was gasping for air. There, the comedian, Stephen Colbert of "Comedy Central," ripped him a new you-know-what, especially on the issue of his membership in the warmongering PNAC. Colbert did with Kristol, what others have failed to do: Confront the evildoer! Some of the exchange went like this:

"Colbert: How�s that Project coming?

Kristol: Well... it�s...(stammering)

Colbert: How�s the [Project for] New American Century? Looks good to me!

Kristol: Ah...ah...I think�hehe...yea...I�m speechless.

Colbert: Really?

Kristol: Yea�we�ve sort of�the Project for the New American Century is just a few people...

Colbert: Come on, it�s a terrific New American Century, right?

Kristol: Well I think we do OK.

Colbert: You Rummy, Wolfowitz, Cheney, Perle, Feith, all you guys right?" (13)

Another party to speak up and confront an evildoer, in the best tradition of Cindy Sheehan, is Ray McGovern, a former intelligence analyst at the CIA. He has, literally, been in Secretary of Defense's Donald Rumsfeld's face about his reasons for the Iraqi War. Like Kristol, "Rummy," is a Neocon. (14)

Finally, I've been going to Anti-Iraqi War rallies, since Oct. 26, 2002. (15) On occasions, I have seen a sign, poster or banner, spotlighting the roles of the Israeli Lobby and the Neocons in that conflict, along with "Big Oil" and the Military-Industrial Complex. (16) I'd like to see a huge poster with the image of a Paul Wolfowitz, a William Kristol or a Richard Perle, or others in the Neocon Mob, at the next rally that I go to. Then I will know that the people are truly getting the message. We now know for sure that some of the miscreants who got us into this chaos are now agitating for war with Iran and threatening Russia and China. We can't let them get away with it. It would be great if the protesters also carried another banner, a really immense one, which read: "STOP THE NEOCONS FROM DIGGING OUR GRAVES!"

Source: http://www.americanchronicle.com/art...articleID=9312

**Armenian** · 10-27-2007, 04:09 PM

Re: The American Century: Neoconservatism

Iraq: Not Oil but Israel

The most popular argument of the critics of the Iraq war has been that the United States went to war for oil � that is, that the war had nothing to do with combating terrorism. Writing in the Christian Science Monitor before the war, Brendan O'Neill reported that "for many in the antiwar movement, the idea that the Bushies' plan to invade the Gulf to get their greasy hands on more oil has become an article of faith, an unquestionable truth repeated like a mantra." [1] Among those believers is America's preeminent left-wing war critic, Noam Chomsky: "Of course it was Iraq's energy resources. It's not even a question. Iraq's one of the major oil producers in the world. It has the second largest reserves and it's right in the heart of the Gulf's oil-producing region, which U.S. intelligence predicts is going to be two thirds of world resources in coming years."[2]

That goes against what I regard as the fundamental reason for the war: the war was led by neoconservatives and fought in the interests of Israel, at least as Likudniks envision Israel's interests. It is all well-documented, though the neocons imply that Israeli interests coincide with those of the United States. But as I point out in my article on the subject � and this fact is on the public record, too � the original idea for the war was conceived in Israel. Moreover, the war achieved the goal hoped for by the Likudniks � destabilization of the Middle East. Although the neoconservative/Israel theory is not without its adherents, a number of factors explain the much greater popularity of the war-for-oil idea among critics of the war. For critics on the Left, the idea fits in with their notion of rapacious capitalism. Perhaps more importantly, their emphasis on the monetary motives of oil companies placed the war in a simple, good-bad framework. "The well-rehearsed oil argument," O'Neill observes, "attempts to make war a simple issue of good versus evil, with oil-greedy imperialists on one side and defenseless civilians on the other." [3]

In other words, the idea that the war was fought to profit the oil companies, complete with the propagandistically effective "No blood for oil" sound bite, provided a perfect counterpole to the Bush administration's presentation of an apocalyptic conflict of good versus evil. Even the neocon supporters of the war lent some credence to its validity with their talk about privatizing Iraqi oil. Of course, that some oil companies might derive benefits from the U.S. takeover of Iraq does not mean they were the driving force. In short, the neoconservatives certainly sought allies for their war agenda, and the promise of oil riches was one way they saw of possibly drawing support from the oil companies. An additional reason for the popularity of the war-for-oil argument is that any reference to Israel and the neoconservatives moves into the taboo area of xxxish power and invites the lethal charge of anti-Semitism. It is obviously far safer to demonize the oil industry than to make anything approaching a critical comment regarding individual xxxs or xxxish interests, even if it is not a criticism of xxxs as a group.

What precisely does the war-for-oil thesis entail? Two motives for such a war suggest themselves, and they are fundamentally different from each other: one is to benefit the American oil industry, and the other is to enhance the hegemonic power of the United States by giving it control of the oil spigot of the world. Let's begin by distinguishing between the oil argument and the current war profiteering. Undoubtedly, the reconstruction of Iraq is a veritable gold mine for some American firms, especially those with close connections to the Bush administration. In fact, the war-profiteering gravy train began while the war was still on. [4] Some of these firms, such as Halliburton, are in the oil-equipment business. And a significant part of the rebuilding naturally involves the oil infrastructure. Thus, the rebuilding of Iraq means profits for those in the oil-equipment business.

But that special sector is not the same thing as what is implied by "the oil industry" � i.e., those firms that actually profit by extracting and selling oil. Halliburton would benefit financially if all the pipelines and oil wells were blown up, so that it could rebuild them. Such a scenario would hardly profit oil producers or the U.S. government. It obviously wouldn't increase the overall oil supply. Nor, certainly, would rebuilding the Iraqi oil industry profit the United States as a whole, since American taxpayers would be funding it. Undoubtedly, there are war profiteers in any war. But as a class they would have had no reason to press specifically for a war on Iraq. Second, it should be acknowledged that the United States would have preferred to gain control of the Iraqi oil. The first locations that U.S. and U.K. forces secured during the war were the oilfields of southern Iraq, with the aim of preventing Saddam from destroying them. Clearly, any occupier would prefer to exploit rather than destroy a country's assets. Keeping the Iraqi oil industry functioning would certainly alleviate the financial burden of American occupation and help fund Iraq's postwar reconstruction. The United States also sought to prevent Saddam from setting fire to the oil wells and causing an environmental catastrophe, as he had done in Kuwait during the first Gulf War. Environmental considerations aside, such fires could have slowed American troop movements northward to Baghdad.[5]

But while the United States would have naturally preferred oil over no oil, the American military's concern for the security of the Iraqi oil wells did not in any way demonstrate that seizing oil resources was the motivation for America to launch its invasion. It is undisputed that Iraq is an oil-rich country. And we may grant that the war party sought to gain support from the oil industry by promising benefits to be derived from that support. War partisans did the same thing when they tried to get international support by implying that countries that did not support the war would be shut out of the Iraqi oil business. However, instead of speculating about the benefits to be derived by American oil companies from U.S. control of Iraq, it is much more reasonable to actually look at Big Oil's position on the war. Did oil companies push for war? The fact is that representatives of the U.S. oil industry had been solid in opposing the embargo on Iraq, which had kept them out of that country. After George W. Bush assumed the presidency in 2001, they lobbied hard for a repeal of the Iran-Libya sanctions act and other embargoes that curbed their expansion of holdings in the Middle East. That put them at loggerheads with the neoconservatives, who for years had been calling for regime change in Iraq.

In a May 2001 Business Week article, Rose Brady reported that the easing of sanctions on rogue states "pits powerful interests such as the pro-Israeli lobby and the U.S. oil industry against each other. And it is sure to preoccupy the Bush Administration and Congress." [6] Fareed Mohamedi of PFC Energy, a consulting firm based in Washington, D.C., that advises petroleum firms, asserted that the large oil companies had sought a more peaceful approach to securing their interests in the Gulf region and the Arab world: "Big oil told the Cheney Task Force on Energy Policy in 2001 that they wanted the U.S. sanctions lifted on Libya and Iran so they could gain access to their oil supplies. As far back as 1990, they were even arguing that the United States should cut a deal with Saddam because he had given signals he was willing to let U.S. oil companies into Iraq."[7]

Oil-industry representatives did not even move toward a pro-war position in the post-September 11 period. According to oil analyst Anthony Sampson in December 2002, "Oil companies have had little influence on U.S. policy-making. Most big American companies, including oil companies, do not see a war as good for business, as falling share prices indicate."[8] Oil companies sought stability, and there was a widespread fear that war would bring on a regional conflagration. "War in the Persian Gulf might produce a major upheaval in petroleum markets, either because of physical damage or because political events lead oil producers to restrict production after the war," wrote economist William D. Nordhaus, a member of President Jimmy Carter's Council of Economic Advisers, in late 2002. "A particularly worrisome outcome would be a wholesale destruction of oil facilities in Iraq, and possibly in Kuwait, Iran, and Saudi Arabia. In the first Persian Gulf War, Iraq destroyed much of Kuwait's oil wells and other petroleum infrastructure as it withdrew. The sabotage shut down Kuwaiti oil production for close to a year, and prewar levels of oil production were not reached until 1993 � nearly two years after the end of the war in February 1991."[9]

It was never a realistic possibility that the oil would somehow pay for the costs of the war and benefit the U.S. economy, though that notion was sometimes bandied about in the media. Obviously, far from providing cheap oil for the United States, the war and the occupation of Iraq have proved a serious economic drain. And the difficulties with the occupation were anticipated before the war started. In fact, a yearlong pre-war State Department study, beginning in February 2002, foresaw the chaotic conditions that would exist during an American occupation of Iraq. [10] The CIA also warned the Bush administration of extensive post-war resistance.[11] Two classified reports prepared for President Bush in January 2003 by the National Intelligence Council, an independent group that advises the director of the CIA, predicted that an American-led invasion of Iraq would increase support for the radical Islamicists and result in a deeply divided Iraqi society prone to violent internal conflict. One of the reports also warned of a possible insurgency against the new Iraqi government or American-led forces by rogue elements from Saddam Hussein's government and existing terrorist groups. In addition, the assessments held that an American attack on Iraq would increase sympathy across the Islamic world for terrorist objectives. Such developments would be hardly be conducive to the stability needed for oil production.[12]

[...]

Source: http://www.thornwalker.com/ditch/snieg_oilwar.htm

**Armenian** · 10-27-2007, 04:50 PM

Re: The American Century: Neoconservatism

Neocon Man

Daniel Pipes was a busy man in the days following September 11, 2001. The Philadelphia-based foreign policy analyst and commentator on terrorism and Islam first learned that planes had crashed into the World Trade Center when a local television producer called to invite him to the station for an interview. Over the next twelve months, Pipes would appear on 110 television and 450 radio shows. His op-eds graced the pages of the Wall Street Journal and the Los Angeles Times. The New York Post signed him up as a columnist. The Philadelphia Inquirer described him as "smoking-hot."

It was not always thus. Pipes, 54, had labored in comparative obscurity during the 1990s, writing a series of books and articles that advanced a hard line on Arab countries from Syria to Saudi Arabia to Iran, and darkly warning that Muslim-Americans posed a threat to the United States. Back then, these were not popular topics on the talk-show circuit. Pipes indeed seemed destined to share the fate of his old friend Steven Emerson, another self-styled terrorism expert, who gained notoriety in the immediate aftermath of the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing for suggesting that it bore a "Middle Eastern trait." Pipes himself echoed this, telling USA Today that the bombing showed that the West was "under attack" and that fundamentalists "are targeting us."

The words of a demagogue, or of a prophet ahead of his time? To a growing circle of conservative admirers, Pipes is the latter. The Forward recently named him one of the nation's fifty most influential American xxxs. Last year President Bush overrode objections from Muslim-American groups in appointing Pipes to the US Institute of Peace, a federal agency whose mandate is to promote the "peaceful resolution of international conflicts," despite the fact that Pipes has long dismissed the very idea of peaceful resolution ("diplomacy rarely ends conflicts," he had written a year earlier).

But Pipes's biggest impact has not come from analyzing foreign affairs. It has come from pointing a finger at a purported fifth column lurking in a place conservatives have long suspected of harboring one: academia. Two years ago Pipes launched Campus Watch, an organization whose stated purpose is to expose the analytical failures and political bias of the field of Middle Eastern studies. The group's first act was to post McCarthy-style "dossiers" on the Internet singling out eight professors critical of American and Israeli policies. When more than a hundred scholars contacted Campus Watch to request that they be added to the list in a gesture of solidarity, Pipes obliged, labeling them "apologists for suicide bombings and militant Islam."

As the latter phrase suggests, when Pipes criticizes scholars, he doesn't just take issue with their arguments. He impugns their motives, tossing out labels like "self-hating" and "anti-American," and lifting quotes out of context to portray his targets as closet sympathizers with Osama bin Laden and Saddam Hussein. Pipes writes columns titled "Profs Who Hate America." "Why do American academics so often despise their own country while finding excuses for repressive and dangerous regimes?" he wrote in the lead-up to the Iraq war, which he heartily backed, mocking scholars for failing to see that Saddam Hussein posed an "imminent threat" to America.

In Pipes's view, universities these days are overrun by extremists who are reflexively hostile to the United States and Israel, blind to the dangers of Islamic terrorism and intolerant of students who dare to veer from the party line. Although Pipes is not wrong that some Middle Eastern scholars underestimated the danger of militant Islam during the 1990s, his portrait of the field as a whole is nothing if not extreme itself. Yet, with the help of Martin Kramer, who edits the journal Pipes founded, Middle East Quarterly, and Stanley Kurtz, a fellow at the Hoover Institution and contributing editor at National Review Online, Pipes has succeeded in popularizing this view.

His grievances have been aired on everything from MSNBC to NPR. The Washington Post ran a front-page story on the issue. College newspapers across the country have published bristling exchanges about Middle Eastern studies. The debate has even reverberated in Congress, where pending legislation would create an advisory board of government appointees to oversee the government-funded area studies programs responsible for teaching thousands of students about the Middle East each year. The goal of the legislation is to insure that Middle Eastern studies programs "represent the full range of views," as opposed to the "one-sided criticisms of American foreign policy" Stanley Kurtz complained about in recent testimony before the House of Representatives.

This might seem like an odd time to be policing the academy in search of scholars too critical of Washington's approach to the Middle East, given the chaos now enveloping Iraq, which numerous academic scholars foresaw. And Pipes's vituperative attacks have not made him a terribly popular figure on many campuses these days. Last fall, I watched him deliver a speech at Yale. Pipes showed up flanked by security guards, who whisked him out the door after the speech and a brief question-and-answer session. Nearly half the students in the audience arrived with a black cloth over their mouths to protest Campus Watch's threat to academic freedom. Yet as one longtime Middle East hand who knows Pipes told me, those expecting Pipes to tone down his criticisms will likely be disappointed, for he carefully calculates what he says. "He's extreme, yes, but for a reason--to push the debate to the right. And it's been effective, no question."

Indeed, arguably Pipes's greatest achievement has been to capitalize on the fears generated by 9/11 in order to cast doubt on the motives and agenda of an entire profession--while keeping his own ideological agenda largely obscured from view. In early January, I met Pipes on the tenth floor of a glass-and-steel highrise in downtown Philadelphia, headquarters of the Middle East Forum, the think tank he founded in 1994 to "promote American interests" in the region. Pipes is a tall man with a close-cropped beard and a lanky, basketball player's build. For all the venom in his writings, in person he is disarmingly soft-spoken and subdued. Throughout our interview in his corner office, decorated with a framed copy of the letter from President Bush nominating him to the US Institute of Peace, he spoke quietly, pausing frequently to rephrase his views. On television, Pipes affects the same cool dispassion, rarely raising his voice, even more rarely getting flustered. It's a style some believe he has cultivated to lend his pronouncements an understated--hence reasonable--air. "Dan has a sort of Svengali-like ability to portray a situation calmly but in the direst of terms," says Ian Lustick, a political scientist at the University of Pennsylvania who has debated him in the past.

One subject Pipes did not wish to discuss was his personal life. Yet his background is of more than passing relevance to anyone wishing to understand his worldview. He is the elder son of Richard Pipes, the renowned Sovietologist at Harvard who left an important mark on the politics of the cold war--and perhaps the current era as well. In the early 1980s Richard Pipes ran the Eastern European and Soviet Affairs desk at the National Security Council. Before that, he served as chairman of "Team B," a group of intelligence analysts brought together in 1975 by then-CIA Director George H.W. Bush. In a manner strikingly similar to that of the neoconservatives who recently dismissed more cautious estimates about Iraq, Team B's members scorned what they considered the timidity of the intelligence establishment, which at the time was supporting d�tente with the Soviet Union. Based on what Richard Pipes himself termed "soft evidence," Team B's members hyped the Soviet threat. One of its young weapons analysts was Paul Wolfowitz. The Defense Secretary at the time was Donald Rumsfeld; the Chief of Staff, xxxx Cheney.

Despite his forays into politics, Richard Pipes was above all a scholar. Young Daniel grew up in a book-lined home in Cambridge where, as his father recounts in his recently published memoir, Vixi, the visitors included Edmund Wilson and Isaiah Berlin. It could not have been a more scholarly milieu, and Daniel evidently soaked it up. In 1967, he began his freshman year at the prestigious university where his father taught, and where afterward he would pursue a PhD in medieval Islamic history.

[...]

The attacks of September 11 proved one thing: Militant Islam was indeed a threat. But did it confirm Pipes's broader views on terrorism and Islam? Pipes's backers certainly thought so. According to Jerry Sorkin, who for years served on the board of the Middle East Forum, donations poured in to the organization almost immediately after the Twin Towers were struck, not least because its founder could suddenly be spotted everywhere: Crossfire, Nightline, Hardball. During this same period, Sorkin says, the diversity that had once characterized the Middle East Forum's board vanished. "I sat at one board meeting and thought to myself, am I at a ZOA [Zionist Organization of America] meeting?" says Sorkin, whose views on the Arab-Israeli conflict are moderate. Sorkin told me he respects Pipes and always felt welcome at the Middle East Forum. Eventually, however, he decided to move on, and says he was not alone.

In the changed atmosphere, Pipes was able to find a home for a book on Muslim-Americans that he claims had been "unpublishable" beforehand. Militant Islam Reaches America, published in 2002, warns that the Muslim-American population harbors "a substantial body" of people who "sympathize with the goals of the suicide hijackers," people who "despise the United States and ultimately wish to transform it into a Muslim country." More recently, Jim Lobe of the Inter-Press Service obtained the draft of a grant proposal in which Pipes proposed launching an "Islamic Progress Institute," which "can articulate a moderate, modern and pro-American viewpoint" on behalf of Muslims. In other words, the man who has complained that Muslims are abusing America's tolerance and failing to watch their hygienic standards now proposes to be their spokesman.

Muslim fundamentalists are "Nazis," "potential killers" who represent "true dangers" to xxxs, Christians, women and gays, he argues. But on the subject of xxxish and Christian fundamentalists, he is far milder. When I asked him whether people like Jerry Falwell, who called 9/11 "God's judgment" on gays, civil libertarians and feminists, were really so different in their attitude toward modernity, he seemed aghast at the very comparison. "I see no signs of that," he said, insisting that Falwell "lives within the framework of a democratic polity and does not believe he has a truth that he and his colleagues hold which he can impose on the rest of us."

Shortly before Pipes launched Campus Watch, Martin Kramer's Ivory Towers on Sand appeared. The academic establishment, argued Kramer in his more scholarly version of the argument Pipes would soon popularize, had been asleep throughout the 1980s and '90s, producing not a single "serious" study on Osama bin Laden while lavishing attention on so-called Muslim moderates.

There is some truth to this. Books like John Esposito's The Islamic Threat: Myth or Reality?, published in 1992, advanced the then-fashionable view that the danger of Islamic terrorism was overblown. "I think a lot of us were slow to appreciate the real depth of radicalism on the Islamic fringe," acknowledges William Quandt, a professor at the University of Virginia and former fellow at the Brookings Institution. Quandt, however, notes that many academics also produced informative, first-rate studies of Islamic politics that Pipes and Kramer ignore. "Is all the contemporary scholarship first-rate? Of course not, but an awful lot of it is pretty darn good."

Dan Brumberg, a Middle East specialist at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, agrees. "I think Dan is right that there was a tendency to read mainstream Islamism as benign and underplay its racist, xenophobic and anti-Semitic currents. But this is a very small part of Middle Eastern studies. Over the past ten years there's been a huge literature on autocracy in the region, and none of it glosses over the problems."

It's also worth asking whether the chief danger in America rests in the excessive influence wielded by dissenting Middle Eastern specialists, several of whom received hate mail and death threats after being attacked by Pipes. (Others, including Ian Lustick at Penn, told me they've learned that students were taking their class in order to serve as spies for Campus Watch.) After all, the specialists who accepted and propagated the dubious claim that Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction mostly resided at think tanks, not universities. Indeed, many of the "America- hating" professors singled out by Campus Watch warned that attacking a country with no proven ties to Al Qaeda might undermine US security by fueling enmity throughout the Muslim world.

Pipes himself voiced no such concerns, arguing instead that the United States "cannot pass up a unique chance to remake the world's most politically fevered regime." In this he echoed Fouad Ajami, whose work Pipes cites approvingly and who is on the list of "Recommended Professors" on Campus Watch's website. That Ajami's predictions about the Iraq war--that US soldiers would be warmly welcomed, that America didn't need help from allies, that democracy would blossom afterward--have been proved wrong has not dislodged his name from the list.

Shortly after Baghdad fell, Pipes himself did voice second thoughts, characterized by the same patronizing attitude that has marked much of his work on Arab societies. Iraq needed a "democratically-minded Iraqi strongman," he'd decided by April of 2003, since its people "mentally live in a world of conspiracy theories" and were not quite ready for Western-style self-rule. Pipes conceded to me that there was an element of "wishful thinking" among supporters of the war, "including in myself." He might have been more sober-minded had he listened to some of the arguments being made by members of the profession he once, a long time ago, aspired to join.

Source: http://www.thenation.com/doc/20040510/press

**Armenian** · 10-27-2007, 05:10 PM

Re: The American Century: Neoconservatism

An integral part of the greater Neo-con agenda...

************************************************** **************

Why Are We Baiting Putin?

by Patrick J. Buchanan

"[N]o legitimate interest is served when oil and gas become tools of intimidation or blackmail, either by supply management or attempt to monopolize transportation," thundered Vice President Cheney to the international pro-democracy conference in Vilnius, Lithuania. "[N]o one can justify actions that undermine the territorial integrity of a neighbor, or interfere with democratic movements." Cheney's remarks were directed straight at the Kremlin and President Vladimir Putin, who is to host the G-8 Conference in July. Cheering Cheney on is John McCain, front-runner for the GOP nomination, who has urged President Bush to snub Putin by boycotting the G-8 summit. What the GOP is thus offering the nation right now is seven more years of in-your-face bellicosity in foreign policy.

What does McCain think we would accomplish � other than a new parading of our moral superiority � by so public an insult to Putin and Russia as a Bush boycott of the St. Petersburg summit? Do we not have enough trouble in this world, do we not have enough people hating us and Bush that we have to get into Putin's face and antagonize the largest nation on earth and a co-equal nuclear power? What is the purpose of this confrontation diplomacy? What does it accomplish? Eisenhower and Nixon did not behave like this. Nor did Ford or Bush's father. Reagan called the Soviet Union an "evil empire" once. But the Soviet Union we confronted in those years was hostile. Until lately, today's Russia was not. Yet the Bush boys are in their pulpits, admonishing the world's sinners every day.

What is their beef with Putin's policy?

In January, Putin decided to stop piping subsidized gas to Kiev and start charging the market price. Reason: Ukraine's president, elected with the assistance of U.S. foundations and quasi-government agencies, said he was reorienting Kiev's foreign policy away from Russia and toward NATO and the United States. If you are headed for NATO, Putin was saying to President Viktor Yushchenko, you can forget the subsidized gas.

Now this is political hardball, but it is a game with which America is not altogether unfamiliar. When Castro reoriented his policy toward Moscow, Cuba's sugar allotment was terminated. U.S. diplomats went all over the world persuading nations not to buy from or sell to Cuba. Economic sanctions on Havana endure to today. We supported, over Reagan's veto, sanctions on South Africa. We have used sanctions as a stick and access to the U.S. market as a carrot since we became a nation. What, after all, was "Dollar Diplomacy" all about? Cheney accuses Moscow of employing pipeline diplomacy � i.e., using its oil and gas pipelines to benefit some nations and cut out others. But the United States does the same thing, as it seeks to have the oil and gas of Central Asia transmitted to the West in pipelines that do not transit Iran or Russia.

"[N]o one can justify actions that undermine the territorial integrity of a neighbor," declared Cheney in Vilnius. How the vice president could deliver that line with a straight face escapes me. Does Cheney not recall our "Captive Nations Resolutions," calling for the liberation of Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania, which, though free between the two world wars, had long belonged to the Russian empire? Does he not recall conservative support for the breakup of the Soviet Union? Does he not recall conservative support for the secession of Slovenia, Croatia, and Bosnia, and more recently Kosovo, from a Serb-dominated Yugoslavia? What concerns Cheney is Moscow's support for the secession of Abkhazia and South Ossetia from Georgia. Georgia's president was also elected with the aid of pro-democracy NGOs, mostly funded by Uncle Sam. All these color-coded revolutions in East Europe and Central Asia bear the label, Made in the U.S.A.

When Cheney says, "No one can justify actions that � interfere with democratic movements," he is hauling water for Freedom House, headed by ex-CIA Director James Woolsey, and similar agencies, which Putin wants shut down or kicked out of Russia for interfering in her internal affairs. We Americans consider the Monroe Doctrine � no foreign power is to come into our hemisphere � to be holy writ. Why, then, can we not understand why Russia might react angrily to our interference in her politics or the politics of former Russian republics?

The effect of U.S. expansion of NATO deep into Eastern Europe, U.S. interference in the politics of the former Soviet republics, and U.S. siting of military bases in the Balkans, Eastern Europe, and Central Asia has been to unite Russia and China, and undo the diplomacy of several successive U.S. presidents. How has this made us more secure? If we don't want these people in our backyard, what are we doing in theirs? If we don't stop behaving like the British Empire, we will end up like the British Empire.

Source: http://www.antiwar.com/pat/?articleid=8964

Who Restarted the Cold War?

By Patrick J. Buchanan

"Putin's Hostile Course," the lead editorial in The Washington Times of Oct. 18, began thus: "Russian President Vladimir Putin's invitation to Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to visit Moscow is just the latest sign that, more than 16 years after the collapse of Soviet communism, Moscow is gravitating toward Cold War behavior. The old Soviet obsession � fighting American imperialism � remains undiluted. "(A)t virtually every turn, Mr. Putin and the Russian leadership appear to be doing their best in ways large and small to marginalize and embarrass the United States and undercut U.S. foreign policy interests." The Times pointed to Putin's snub of Robert Gates and Condi Rice by having them cool their heels for 40 minutes before a meeting. Then came a press briefing where Putin implied Russia may renounce the Reagan-Gorbachev INF treaty, which removed all U.S. and Soviet medium-range missiles from Europe, and threatened to pull out of the Conventional Forces in Europe Treaty, whereby Russia moved its tanks and troops far from the borders of Eastern Europe.

On and on the Times indictment went. Russia was blocking new sanctions on Iran. Russia was selling anti-aircraft missiles to Iran. Russia was selling weapons to Syria that found their way to Hezbollah and Hamas. Russia and Iran were talking up an OPEC-style natural gas cartel. All this, said the Times, calls to mind "Soviet-era behavior." Missing from the prosecution's case, however, was the motive. Why has Putin's Russia turned hostile? Why is Putin mending fences with China, Iran and Syria? Why is Putin sending Bear bombers to the edge of American airspace? Why has Russia turned against America? For Putin's approval rating is three times that of George Bush. Who restarted the Cold War? To answer that question, let us go back those 16 years.

What happened in 1991 and 1992?

Well, Russia let the Berlin Wall be torn down and its satellite states be voted or thrown out of power across Eastern Europe. Russia agreed to pull the Red Army all the way back inside its border. Russia agreed to let the Soviet Union dissolve into 15 nations. The Communist Party agreed to share power and let itself be voted out. Russia embraced freedom and American-style capitalism, and invited Americans in to show them how it was done. Russia did not use its veto in the Security Council to block the U.S. war to drive Saddam Hussein, an ally, out of Kuwait. When 9-11 struck, Putin gave his blessing to U.S. troops using former republics as bases for the U.S. invasion.

What was Moscow's reward for its pro-America policy?

The United States began moving NATO into Eastern Europe and then into former Soviet republics. Six ex-Warsaw Pact nations are now NATO allies, as are three ex-republics of the Soviet Union. NATO expansionists have not given up on bringing Ukraine, united to Russia for centuries, or Georgia, Stalin's birthplace, into NATO. In 1999, the United States bombed Serbia, which has long looked to Mother Russia for protection, for 78 days, though the Serbs' sole crime was to fight to hold their cradle province of Kosovo, as President Lincoln fought to hold onto the American South. Now America is supporting the severing of Kosovo from Serbia and creation of a new Islamic state in the Balkans, over Moscow's protest. While Moscow removed its military bases from Cuba and all over the Third World, we have sought permanent military bases in Russia's backyard of Central Asia. We dissolved the Nixon-Brezhnev ABM treaty and announced we would put a missile defense system in Poland and the Czech Republic. Under presidents Clinton and Bush, the United States financed a pipeline for Caspian Sea oil to transit Azerbaijan and Georgia to the Black Sea and Turkey, cutting Russia out of the action.

With the end of the Cold War, the KGB was abolished and the Comintern disappeared. But the National Endowment for Democracy, Freedom House and other Cold War agencies, funded with tens of millions in tax-exempt and tax dollars, engineered the ouster of pro-Russian regimes in Serbia, Ukraine and Georgia, and sought the ouster of the regime in Minsk. At the Cold War's end, the United States was given one of the great opportunities of history: to embrace Russia, largest nation on earth, as partner, friend, ally. Our mutual interests meshed almost perfectly. There was no ideological, territorial, historic or economic quarrel between us, once communist ideology was interred.

We blew it.

We moved NATO onto Russia's front porch, ignored her valid interests and concerns, and, with our "indispensable-nation" arrogance, treated her as a defeated power, as France treated Weimar Germany after Versailles. Who restarted the Cold War? Bush and the braying hegemonists he brought with him to power. Great empires and tiny minds go ill together.

Source: http://www.informationclearinghouse....ticle18590.htm

**Armenian** · 10-27-2007, 05:20 PM

Re: The American Century: Neoconservatism

Syria In Their Sights

The neocons plan their next �cakewalk.�

by Robert Dreyfuss

It�s happening again. It all sounds depressingly familiar, and it is. The Bush administration accuses the leader of a major Arab country of supporting terrorism and harboring weapons of mass destruction. The stable of neoconservative pundits begins beating the drums of war. American forces begin massing on the country�s border, amid ominous talk of cross-border attacks. Top U.S. officials warn that American patience with the country�s leader is running out, and the United States imposes economic sanctions unilaterally. There are threats about taking the whole thing to the United Nations Security Council. And, in Washington, an exile leader with questionable credentials begins making the rounds of official Washington and finds doors springing open at the Pentagon, the National Security Council, and at Elizabeth Cheney�s shop at the State Department.

This time it is Syria. The pressure is on, and it will likely get a lot worse very soon. On Dec. 15, the second installment of the report by a UN team investigating the assassination of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafiq Hariri is delivered. The first report, released in October, implicated several members of President Bashar Assad�s family in the Hariri murder, though without hard evidence. It would be wrong, however, to see the Bush administration�s campaign against Syria only through the lens of the Hariri case. Like the attack on Iraq, it is a longstanding vendetta.

Three years ago, the U.S. invasion of Iraq was widely viewed as the first chapter of a region-wide strategy to redraw the entire map of the Middle East. After Iraq, Syria and Iran would be the next targets, after which the oil-rich states of the Arabian Gulf, including Saudi Arabia, would follow. It was a policy driven by neoconservatives in and out of the Bush administration, and they didn�t exactly make an effort to keep it secret. In April 2003, in an article in The American Prospect entitled �Just the Beginning,� I wrote, �Those who think that U.S. armed forces can complete a tidy war in Iraq, without the battle spreading beyond Iraq�s borders, are likely to be mistaken.� The article quoted various neocon strategists who sought precisely that. Among them was Michael Ledeen, the arch-Machiavellian and Iran-Contra manipulator-in-chief, who argued from his perch at the American Enterprise Institute: �I think we�re going to be obliged to fight a regional war, whether we want to or not. As soon as we land in Iraq, we�re going to face the whole terrorist network. It may turn out to be a war to remake the world.�

Source: http://www.amconmag.com/2006/2006_01_16/cover.html

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