For the 2001 debate season the topic was Weapons of Mass Destruction and I was reading every single non-classified intelligence brief that came out of American Think Tanks. There was never anything conclusive on Iraq. For every brief taht said he was developing WMDs, there was one saying their wasn't. Teams typically stayed away from Sadam because there was a pretty weak case for taking action against him in order to stop the spread of weapons of mass destruction. However, there were forces printing briefs warning of Iraq's capabilities. Documents like the blatantly forged Niger Uranium document that the UN laughed at seemed to pop up a lot and then get discredited. Most of the briefs I read were from conservative think tanks. How it works is corporations fund people to do research and pass that on to lawmakers, debaters, and political parties.
There are very powerful forces at work and you should know how they work. The Project for A New American Century (PNAC) is essentially an openly imperialistic organization that pushes policies for an stonger America, an empire is their goal. Their website puts it nicely: PNAC "is a non-profit educational organization dedicated to a few fundamental propositions: that American leadership is good both for America and for the world; that such leadership requires military strength, diplomatic energy and commitment to moral principle; and that too few political leaders today are making the case for global leadership."They put out briefs like Pax America in 1993 that you should research. In this brief they recommended $6 billion more for the military and a "permanent militray base in the middle-east". During the first two years in office, Bush requested from congress, can you guess how much more for the military? Thats rightm six billion dollars. According to the PNAC they would need a "Pearl-Harbor like attack" in order for the plans to go through. The military base in the middle-east had to wait until after 9-11. See, here's how it works. We've been buddy-buddy with Saudi royal family for a long time, and the Saudis are very rich and very Islamic. Islamic factions withint the country essentially run the school system in exchange for the Monarchy to rule the country. This produces a lot of militants because we have a military base in Saudi Arabia and assholes like Osama Bin Laden are able to brainwash young Saudis who have been taught in their Islamic schools how evil the hethens are and how muslim territory should be for muslims only. So, one way to solve this problem is to establish another base of operation in the Middle East, because pulling out of Saudi Arabia wouldn't be good for us and would be appeasing Muslim tensions. So first we need a base in the middle-east before we can shift our power out of Saudi Arabia.
Shifting power out of Saudi Arabia would appease the very rich oil traders that American is fond of. Such as the bin Laden family. Now remember Osama was one of 52 children (thats gotta be a rough child-hood), and his oldest brother and head of the very wealthy family likes to do business with Texas oil companies such as Bush. Those powerful people in American who are in charge of keeping our oil cheap have long had to love Saudi's like the ones in Osama's family. That is why when 9-11 happened, there were 8 planes that flew powerful Saudi's out of the country so that they would be safe.
I remember reading briefs from these conservative think tanks calling Osama bin Laden "the longtime boogeyman of US foreign policy". Research it! Thats what he was dismissed as by many in the intelligence community. Many, whom were more interested in nation building, said that terrorist training camps in Afghanistan did not exist.
Now it's important to know who the PNAC are. Paul Wolfowitz, a VERY aggressive Reagan era policy-maker. He has been a leader in the PNAC and is now the Undersecretary of Defense. Richard Perle, is another leader for the PNAC, he recently resigned as chairman of an Administrative Advisory Board. It goes on and on, and this group known and "neo-conservatives" set the foreign policy for our country. While PNAC is a "non-profit" organization, they use CATO Institue and Heritage Foundation, which is funded by billions in corporate money to research conservative policy for them.
The aim has always been nation-building. From the beginning the neo-conservatives did not give a shit about terrorists and that is why Clinton went after Osama and 9-11 happened on Bush's watch. Proof of this is seen onc you understand that the CIA has been the machanism for nation-building and Richard Clarke was the top counter-terrorism guy in the White house. If Bush really wasn't interested in nation building like he said he wasn't when he ran for office, then he would have been getting his iltelligence from Richard Clark, instead George Tenet briefed the President DAILY. After finally setting up Clarke's counter-terrorism force, netiehr of them ever met with Clark to dicuss counterterrorism.
You can see where priorities of the people making the foreign policy for this administration are. These people and thier intricate web of nation-building rather than counter-terrorism one could argue are responsible for 9-11. Now, many could argue these groups are (or at least were) legitimate in ignoring non-state actors (terrorists) and focusing on "rogue nations" as they have labeled them to gain support for military action against them. This is because far worse abuses occur under the hands of military dictators and state action than terrorists.
Let's us just be honest about our foreign policy though, it was the neo-conservatives that have been ignoring terrorism all along and to show this I will quote Robert Oakley, ambassadar of counterterrorism under Reagan who said "Overall I give Clinton very high marks. The only major criticism I have is the obsession with Osama, which made him stronger."
And why would Clinton be going after terrorist which protected Americans and the neo-cons, Rumsefled, Cheney, Powell and Bush be focused on nation-building. Because the neo-conservatives listen to corporate backed "think tanks" and nation-building requires more money for defense which then goes directly to the companies that fund those think tanks, and got to companies such as Kellogg, Brown and Root, a subsidiary of Haliburton, which Cheney was the CEO of.
This is how foreign policy works.
Faithfully,
--Rob
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