q-and-a.orgLots of good stuff in this fascinating inside look into the Pentagon, Office of Special Plans, and the neo-conservative cabal:
...snip...
LAMB: But, if you get on their Web site and look at their advisory board, the names, almost all of them are recognizable. The Washington Institute for Near-East Policy, Warren Christopher, Larry Eagleburger, Alex Hague, Alexander Hague, Max Kempleman, Jean Kirkpatrick, Sam Lewis, Edward Luttwak, Robert McFarland, Marty Parris (ph), Richard Perle, James Roach, George Schultz, Paul Wolfowitz, Michael Mandelmaun (ph), James Woolsey and Mortimer Zuckerman.
KWIATKOSKI: Yes, those - and those are just the top guys. If you go down to the next level, you’re going to see guys that I actually know who were assigned into the Pentagon doing political appointed type work on policy, yes. Yes, very influential. And really, if you want to study neo-conservatism, you’ve got quite a few key names there, as well as some folks that people would consider to be more traditional conservatives. But, I can tell you, I’ll tell you something about George Schultz, that - there was a fax that came into the office. It wasn’t for me. I happened to get it, and I looked at this fax. It was a short note from George Schultz, who was on - who at that time, I don’t know if he still is - but he was on the Defense Policy Board, along with Richard Perle. It was a fax, a copy of a fax that he had sent to Don Rumsfeld in June of 2002, June of 2002 I believe it was. It was the summer of 2002.
And on this fax, it was a short, one-note thing, from Schultz to Rummy. Basically,
we have to get together and talk about what we do after the victory in Iraq, and this was in the summer of 2002, long before even the president and the vice president had begun their round of why we fight-type propaganda speeches.
...snip...
LAMB: What, in your opinion, is the motivator for all these people you’re talking about?
KWIATKOSKI: Oh, there’s a couple different levels, but I think, for guys like Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, a lot of the neo-conservatives, even George W. Bush and certainly Cheney, the vision is that we are not really a republic anymore. We’re certainly not a limited state. We are the world’s most important and all-powerful state, and that we have certain rights. Yes, we have certain responsibilities, but I think the rights are what drive them. And those rights include the right to do what we want, to get what we need, to have what we want to have. I think that’s what it is and, you know, we’ve built very massive mega-bases, permanent. These are permanent military bases in Iraq. We’ve done that in other places, as well, in the Middle East, but certainly these - this construction project in Iraq, in fact most of the money has been for military construction of - for our use. I think that’s a big part of it, shifting our footprint.
And certainly, even long before George W. Bush, the Pentagon has been interested in, from a global perspective, shifting and reshaping our global military footprint, and Mesopotamia is just absolutely, you know, wonderful. It is the most strategic location. I don’t care if you’re talking about water, trade routes, oil, our neighbors, our friends, people that may be threats in the future that we want to leverage. Iraq is perfect for all those things. And so, from their perspective, from the neo-conservative perspective, there is this geo-political reshaping that needs to go on, and Iraq is part of that. And so, we make the decision and we do the thing, and we did the thing. And we’ve built the bases, and we’re not leaving Iraq for the - you know, for all that.
Printer-friendly format
Email this thread to a friend
Bookmark this thread
(131 posts)
Send PM |
Profile |
Ignore
