Just a question: Does John Kerry know about PNAC?

[complain jane]

I mean, I'm just wondering.

[nadinbrzezinski]

1. Yes... yuo can bet on it

[complain jane]

3. Anybody think it's a good idea TO MAYBE BRING IT UP?

[wtmusic]

6. No

it sounds paranoid (which is a sad comment in itself)

[AntiFascist]

27. ITS ONLY PARANOID IF.....

you try to tie it in with LIHOP or MIHOP. There's nothing paranoid about pointing out facts that have been published by PNAC. This is just a copout.

[Roland99]

I've been screaming for WEEKS for them to bring it up!!

Wolfowitz and Feith have been operating for years under complete cover. No one has hardly even touched on their operations.


Remember, they also worked under Bush, Sr's administration. Remember when ol' George was talking about a "New World Order"? The PNAC was born under Reagan/Bush.

[peacetalksforall]

13. Yes, but what does it get him if our Senate and Congress Dems don't

peep? You can't be out there alone.

I'm convinced that the per cent of people out there who don't have a clue is enormous.

I want scream when I hear Bush voters spouting old, hackneyed, boring accusations about Kerry. It's beyond the processing power of some of these people to understand the meaning of PNAC.

So what can he do in two weeks? It requires an explanation. Any ideas on how he can educate the people and comment for effect in two weeks?

Possibly he can say that Cheny and members of the Cabinet, plus newspeople and other leaders wrote a letter in 1998 to President Clinton asking him to invade Iraq and those same people are now in charge and did invade Iraq - by going against the UN and not listenting to some members of Congress.

[AntiFascist]

28. It can be done in the form of a 527 ad along the lines of ....

"Hijacking Catastrophe". Show the actual documents with certain sections highlighted:

In "The Wolfowitz Doctrine" from NYT

"...access to vital raw materials, primarily Persian Gulf Oil"

(I think there are PNAC documents mentioning this as well.)

In "Rebuilding America's Defenses" from PNAC, 2000

"increase budget $100 billion"
"boldly and purposefully promote American principles abroad"
"shape circumstances before crises arise"
eliminate "states like Iraq"

"the process..of revolutionary change is likely to be a long one"
"absent some catastrophic and catalyzing event like a new Pearl Harbor"

"a willingness to undertake military action...remove Saddam Hussein from power"

Then show the signatory page highlighting signatures of key Pentagon and State Dept officials:

Elliot Abrams
Richard L. Armitage
John Bolton
Salmay Khalilzad
Richard Perle
Donald Rumsfeld
Paul Wolfowitz

The underlying message should be that this strategy may be increasing terrorism against the U.S. It may have even provided the 9/11 attackers with more conviction.

[JohnnyCougar]

36. You forgot the biggest ones:

Jeb Bush and Dick Cheney.

[evilqueen]

40. The name that surprised me most was Steve Forbes.

I don't know why that surprised me, I just never really thought about him with them like that.

[AntiFascist]

42. Oh that's right!!!!!

There was a big article in Forbes about how we desparately need the oil in Iraq.

[shelley806]

32. IT IS VITAL TO BRING IT UP!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I knew about neocons, and Srauss (professor at U of Chicago, father of neoconservatism), but I just found out about PNAC 2 weeks ago when I googled it after reading so many comments on DU referring to it. If Kerry has an October surprise, I wish it would include PNAC.

[kokomo]

2. Why do Dems never bring it up? Is it because its too damning?

I bring it up to folks I talk with all of the time and most don't even know what I am talking about. Of course, have been told by Republicans that PNAC is a creation of leftist conspiratists, that there is no such thing, that the website is a leftist ruse. How do you talk to such folks???

[complain jane]

7. I had some rightwing woman tell me that PNAC is just a think tank

and that think tanks have no power. This was on some rightwing message board. I informed her who the original signatories were and gave her the link to their own website and I never heard from her again. Maybe she imploded, we can only hope.

[Mayberry Machiavelli]

44. Wolfowitz, Feith, Cambone and company are proud members.

[SeveneightyWhoa]

4. Of course!

He's a smart man.

He's keeping quiet about it now, for election purposes -- make no mistake, though: when he's elected, the neo-cons are out of business.

[hippiechick]

10. Don't be naive ...

... the neo-cons won't go 'out of business' once Kerry takes office ... they'll just go back underground and we won't as easily know what they're up to.

Shit like this has been 30 years in the making, it's a solid good-ole-boy network with worldwide tentacles. They'll just set up office somewhere else.


:hippie:

[complain jane]

14. Yeah, a cave in Afghanistan.

[hippiechick]

26. No, like The AEI offices, or The Hudson Institute

or the Carlyle Group's HQ ...

They're all over the place already.


:hippie:

[SeveneightyWhoa]

15. I meant out-of-business..

..as far as no longer running American foreign policy.

Obviously Kerry won't literally put them "out of business", as that'd require some sort of mob hit or Wellstonian tactics.

[cliss]

25. You could have a point there,

but the PNAC has received a huge blow right on top of their plans of world domination. I've read their manifesto and some other documents.

You're right that they've been like a cancer that's been festering for about 30 years. Over time, this ideology continued to grow and pick up support. And of course, when Bush and Cheney the Eel slithered up the steps of the White House, the PNAC had its moment.

[Ruby Romaine]

5. Kerry is not a Pollyanaa, he knows all, unlike Gore

[jobycom]

12. I think you confuse the political image Gore tried to project

with the real Gore. Gore was brilliant, he knew what was going on, but he knew America wouldn't respond well to a divisive campaign from the Democrats, so he tried to run positive. It worked, he won, but you know the rest.

Gore was a missed opportunity that even many Democrats don't seem to understand, still. Gore was one of the most informed candidates I've ever seen. Even Clinton was jealous of him.

[evilqueen]

41. and Gore spends a lot of time online

I read a piece in New Yorker on him last month. He does a LOT of reading online. Probably even skims through here once in a while, if he knows about this place.

[jobycom]

43. He knows

Listen to his speeches. It's like he's taking the wacko stuff we say here, weeding out the extremes, and crafting it all to appeal to a mainstream audience.

[tavalon]

46. Yep

He is Jeb Bartlett without as much charisma.

[complain jane]

16. What do you mean?

I'm still learning about PNAC. Is there anyone here who thinks it is just a conspiracy theory? If you do, why do you think that? I'm not picking a fight with anyone, I'm sincerely curious about this. I learned about PNAC from it's own website.

[Stephanie]

19. We have more than a hundred mainstream articles about PNAC

archived here at DU. See the link in my sig line.

[complain jane]

23. Ooh.... THANK you!

:toast:

[jobycom]

8. Obviously

Kerry can't talk about PNAC because the media hasn't reported it, and so people aren't aware of it. If Kerry brings it up, the Republicans will drop more "grassy knoll" and "Roswell" bombs on him, and he'll sound crazy.

And no, I'm not saying PNAC is a conspiracy theory, just that the Repubs and the media will make it sound like that, and before kerry can straighten it out he will have lost. Remember all the media stories about Gore's lies. The stories were all wrong, Gore did not lie or exagerate, but that's what people believed. The media has never corrected that image.

If someone else brought it up and the media covered it, then people would know, and Kerry could talk about it, but as the media is now obviously closing ranks behind the man who has given their parent corporations tons of tax cut money, I wouldn't look for it to happen, unless someone can make it become a story, somehow.

[complain jane]

11. I made a blog about it and collected some good articles about it

and I'm making a more elaborate site about it (my hobby is making websites anyway so no I'm not going off the deep end with this) and passed the link around to what I've made so far and I've gotten some really interesting reactions. NOBODY I have spoken to except for one very well-informed person has heard of it.

http://www.PNACinfo.com

Here is the link I made so far. I'm making a more extensive one in my spare time. If anyone has any suggestions please, I'd love the input. And if I have anything on there that is inaccurate or not such a good idea please tell me about that too.

Passing the link around to people I know so far has made some progress, so I'd like to build on it a little if I can. Input is greatly appreciated.

This is so frustrating.

[jobycom]

18. Good job. You know, Kennedy tried to bring it up

During his speech where he called Bush a liar. I don't think he actually discussed PNAC, but he accused Bush of dreaming up the whole invasion back in 98 in Austin. Since that was around the time PNAC asked Clinton to invade Iraq, and since Bush's foreign advisors were mostly singatories of the invasion request, it seems clear that's what Kennedy was referring to.

[ladybugg33]

9. He can't mention it too much without being accused of anti-Semitism.

This is a very effective way to squash free speech these days. With so much against the Dems (the courts, the media, the government, the military, the corporations, Nader, Putin) it's amazing to me that Kerry is doing as well as he is. Without 9/11 Bush would have been mincemeat!

[peacetalksforall]

20. There are hardly any appearances of people like Ken Adelman

going on TV accusing people of being anti-semite.

But, we now know (what we didn't know at the beginning) - PNAC equals Israel. So they automatically wrap themselves in sensitivity - wrongly exploited because people don't want to make the distinction between the State of Israel and the Sharon government and his operatives who are one and the same with PNAC member agendas.

[AntiFascist]

29. More noise is being made about how America's presence...

may be putting Israel at risk. Check out the foreign affairs forum.

[WilliamPitt]

17. He does. We talked about it last winter

His instinct is that trying to explain it in a way that fits into the narrow confines of our media 'debate' and 'journalism' would lead to confused gibberish; the whores, in trying to explain his positions, would actually have to work...and they hate that, so they wouldn't work, so it would all become goop.

His campaign is focusing on the war itself, the realities on the ground, social security, health care, the economy, etc. There's more than enough ammo there.

The best way to deal with PNAC is to chase its believers out of government.

[Old and In the Way]

24. 1st order of business

"to chase its believers out of government."

Kerry is the Bush antidote. He knows the unfinished business of the 80s (Iran/Contra-Arms for Hostages) and the 90s (BCCI) has got to get finished under his administration. And he is precisely the right Democrat to make it happen.

[aden_nak]

21. It's too late to bring up PNAC.

And the general population is too dim to understand its significance. Period.

[Nordic]

22. Kerry's M.O. = K.I.S.S. (keep it simple, stupid)

He has to keep his message clean and simple and easily repeated.

He's doing an excellent job.

However, the goddamn Dumbocrats should DEFINITELY bring up PNAC every chance they get.

The democratic "leadership" has failed miserably at this, and at SOOOO many things.

[AntiFascist]

30. If it's done in the form of a 527 ad....

the Kerry campaign can distance itself from it. They can even claim it doesn't necessarilly represent their complete views.

[AntiFascist]

31. This thread is dropping like a rock

:kick:

[SammyWinstonJack]

33. I'm sure he is aware of it

Pres Clinton was from what I have read. Wasn't it in '98 when the PNACers tried to get him to oust Saddam?

[UpsideDownFlag]

34. If your average DUer knows about it....maybe he does, too?

i dunno, maybe somewhere in his 20 years in the senate he found out about it.

:eyes:

[TexasSissy]

I keep forgetting...what is PNAC?

[TexasSissy]

35. I keep forgetting...what is PNAC?

[SammyWinstonJack]

37. Plan for a New American Century!

[AntiFascist]

38. Which translates to mean....

Plans for the apocalypse and an oppressive world government, or "How I learned to stop worrying and love the bomb."

[Mayberry Machiavelli]

45. Project for a New American Century, not Plan.

http://www.newamericancentury.org


PBS Frontline: Streaming video from the TV show, excellent coverage of the topic of PNAC/Wolfowitz and company

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/iraq/view/

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/truth/view/

Excellent article on PNAC foreign policy by Atlanta Journal-Constitution's Jay Bookman (this article was written during the propaganda runup to the war!)

http://www.countercurrents.org/us-bookman080503.htm

[BootinUp]

39. he ain't no George W. Bush.

course he knows those PNACer fools.