PNAC history

Democratic Underground keeps archives and historical documents created by its contributors in the hopes of creating an organizational memory, something which the US could use as well. If you are interested in learning more about the Project for a New American Century, please see their latest PNAC primer update:

Feeling confident that all plans were on track for moving aggressively in the world, the Bush Administration in September of 2002 published the "National Security Strategy of the United States of America." The official policy of the U.S. government, as proudly proclaimed in this major document, is virtually identical to the policy proposals in various PNAC white papers and similar ones from other think tanks, such as the American Enterprise Institute, the operational hub of Washington's neo-cons.

Chief among these proposals are: 1) "Pre-emptive" wars should be launched, even if there is no meaningful provocation or imminent threat, whenever the U.S. thinks a country may be amassing too much power and/or could provide some sort of competition in the "benevolent hegemony" region. A later corollary rethinks the country's atomic policy: nuclear weapons would no longer be considered defensive, but could be used offensively in support of political/economic ends; so-called "mini-nukes" could be employed in these regional wars. 2) International treaties and opinion are to be ignored whenever they interfere with U.S. imperial goals. 3) The new policies "will require bases and stations within and beyond Western Europe and Northeast Asia."

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In other words, Bush & Co. would move the war plans forward and, in the interim, try to cobble together some reasonable-sounding "intelligence" that could justify the invasion. Hence, Cheney's red-hot anger that the CIA couldn't, or wouldn't, come up with the proof required, so Rumsfeld then established his own in-house Office of Special Plans, staffed with PNAC political types rather than intelligence analysts. The required "intelligence" was pasted together from unreliable raw data and rumors from dubious exiles supplied by Ahmad Chalabi's Iraqi National Congress. That "intelligence" was stove-piped directly to Cheney in the White House, thus avoiding having to vet it through the government's professional analysts, and the green light was turned on, with Powell delivering the laughable pack of lies to the U.N. Security Council in February 2003. The Council wouldn't vote for a specific authorization for war and so Bush hastily launched "shock-and-awe" bombing and the ground-invasion of that country before the international community could organize itself effectively to resist.

Bush two months later, standing under a huge "Mission Accomplished" banner, declared that the U.S. "has prevailed" over the Iraqis. Expecting to be welcomed as "liberators," and with no Plan B to rely on in case that didn't happen, the U.S. soon became bogged down fighting a mostly nationalist insurgency that continues until this day, one that grows in ferocity because the U.S. was responsible not only for an enormous loss of Iraqi civilians as "collateral damage," numbered in the tens of thousands, but also because of lack of employment for young men and the much-publicized torture and humiliation of tens of thousands of detained Iraqis. Iraq then became a magnet, and perfect training ground, for jihadist fighters from all over the Middle East.