Project Update

Keep your friends close..and your enemies closer..Reprinted with permission from TruthOut.org~Dusty
By William Rivers Pitt
t r u t h o u t | Columnist Monday 14 April 2008

In the Persian Gulf region, the presence of American forces, along with British and French units, has become a semi-permanent fact of life. Though the immediate mission of those forces is to enforce the no-fly zones over northern and southern Iraq, they represent the long-term commitment of the United States and its major allies to a region of vital importance. Indeed, the United States has for decades sought to play a more permanent role in Gulf regional security. While the unresolved conflict with Iraq provides the immediate justification, the need for a substantial American force presence in the Gulf transcends the issue of the regime of Saddam Hussein.

- “Rebuilding America’s Defenses: Strategy, Forces and Resources for a New Century,” PNAC Report September 2000, p. 26

Let’s recap.

Before delivering his State of the Union address in January of 1998, President Clinton received a letter containing one explicit demand: invade Iraq immediately and overthrow the regime of Saddam Hussein.

“The only acceptable strategy,” read this letter, “is one that eliminates the possibility that Iraq will be able to use or threaten to use weapons of mass destruction. In the near term, this means a willingness to undertake military action as diplomacy is clearly failing. In the long term, it means removing Saddam Hussein and his regime from power. That now needs to become the aim of American foreign policy. We urge you to articulate this aim, and to turn your Administration’s attention to implementing a strategy for removing Saddam’s regime from power.”

The letter was written by a group called the Project for the New American Century (PNAC), a right-wing organization originally formed by William Kristol, Republican pundit and son of neoconservative movement founder Irving Kristol, and by long-time GOP think-tanker Gary Schmitt. PNAC’s original sources of funding in 1998 included notorious far-right groups such as the Scaife Foundations, the Olin Foundation and the Bradley Foundation.

Nobody had ever heard of PNAC in 1998, and thanks to the assertions and demands written in their January letter to Clinton, nobody really took them seriously after hearing of them. Invade Iraq? Were they serious? The very same year this PNAC letter was delivered to Clinton, a book co-authored by former President George H. W. Bush and his NSA Director Brent Scowcroft, articulated the consensus foreign policy opinion on the matter, specifically by explaining their decision not to occupy Iraq and topple its government during the first Gulf War.

“Trying to eliminate Saddam,” Bush Sr. and Scowcroft wrote in 1998, “extending the ground war into an occupation of Iraq, would have violated our guideline about not changing objectives in midstream, engaging in ‘mission creep,’ and would have incurred incalculable human and political costs … We would have been forced to occupy Baghdad and, in effect, rule Iraq. The coalition would instantly have collapsed, the Arabs deserting it in anger and other allies pulling out as well.”

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Real Change..

William Rivers Pitt graciously allows us to reprint one of his fine articles. You can read his posts at TruthOut.org~Dusty

I put a dollar in one of those change machines. Nothing changed.
- George Carlin

Change, right?

That’s been the big buzzword since the middle of December or thereabouts. While the last days of 2007 bled away one by one, and as the pre-Iowa political bedlam became loud beyond endurance, “change” was the word on the lips of every candidate. One could not swing a dead cat by the tail in Ames or Des Moines without swatting campaign literature pledging “change to come,” but only if they got the votes.

Giuliani described himself as an “agent of change.” Clinton talked about needing experience in order to be able to bring change. Obama fairly waxed rhapsodic on the topic, setting the pre-caucus benchmark late in November by using the word four times in one sentence. Romney vowed to bring change to Washington, DC. Even McCain and The Artist Formerly Known As Thompson were grudgingly forced to work the word into their speeches after a while. It was everywhere, and any credulous folks in the crowd must have gotten to a point, after hearing it so often from so many candidates, where it felt safe to assume “change” was really coming no matter who wins come November.

“Change.” Let’s talk about that word, and what it involves. Certainly, making change in America’s domestic and foreign policy priorities is a necessary activity. Consider …

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