Monday, March 03, 2008

PNAC rises from the ashes!

I saw this post from DKos user Ca Libertarian, and I'm just amazed by it. It appears that the neocons' discredited defense and foreign policy think-tank, the great Project for a New American Century, has been reborn as the new defense and foreign policy think-tank Foundation for the Defense of Democracies (FDD).

Ca Libertarian looked over the roster, and there are quite a few individuals who jumped over from PNAC to the FDD. And what a roster it is! We've got Steve Forbes, Jeanne Kirkpatrick, James Woolsey, Charles Krauthammer, Bill Kristol and Richard Pearle all jumping over from PNAC to this new think-tank. These guys were the heavy hitters in creating PNAC, and trying to sell this neoconservative disaster--first to President Clinton, and then successfully to President George W. Bush. However, the FDD may just be going further than PNAC had ever dreamed of. Looking at the FDD's roster, there are some new supporters of the Bush administration's Great War on Terror. They include former House Rep. Jack Kemp, Senator Joe Lieberman, Senator Zell Miller, and Victoria Toensing, who was the former chief counsel to the Senate Intelligence Committee.

The danger of this think-tank is that it almost breaks itself away from the stigma of PNAC, and PNAC's association with the neoconservative agenda of marketing and engaging in the Bush administration's war in Iraq. The Foundation for the Defense of Democracies has almost no references to anything regarding PNAC. I did an advanced search through FDD for the "Project for a New American Century," and I received four results of some old 2004 articles. And the articles were really about speculation that the neocon foreign policy may have been correct in pushing the U.S. to invade Iraq. Going through the sources of stories that FDD posted for the Middle East, I see that a number of the sources are from conservative papers--the Wall Street Journal, the Washington Times, the National Review, the New York Post, and the New York Sun. And stories from U.S. News and World Report, The Washington Post, and The Boston Globe, are older 2005 stories that were reporting the U.S. war in Iraq was a success, and that democracy was flourishing with Iraqis voting to select their own representatives for the 275-member Iraqi National Assembly in order to write Iraq's new constitution. The FDD is a think-tank that is supportive of the Bush war in Iraq. They even have their own blog, which is nothing more than a reposting of conservative media stories and editorials, with no analysis or commentary on the articles. The bottom line is that PNAC has come back under a new name, but with the same founders and the same neoconservative ideology.

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