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These are talking points concerning this PNAC plan which George W. Bush has apparently adopted as a blueprint for his administration’s foreign policy.  What does this (PNAC) document reveal about the following topics and ideas?

1. Weapons of Mass Destruction. As for Iraq’s alleged "weapons of mass destruction", these were dismissed, in so many words, as a convenient excuse, which it is. "While the unresolved conflict with Iraq provides the immediate justification," it says, "the need for a substantial American force presence in the Gulf transcends the issue of the regime of Saddam Hussein." How has this grand strategy been implemented? A series of articles in the Washington Post, co-authored by Bob Woodward of Watergate fame and based on long interviews with senior members of the Bush administration, reveals how September 11 was manipulated.

2. Terrorism. One should note that on September 12, 2001, without any evidence of who the hijackers were, Donald Rumsfeld demanded that the United States attack Iraq. According to Woodward, Rumsfeld told a cabinet meeting that Iraq should be "a principal target of the first round in the war against terrorism". Iraq was temporarily spared only because Colin Powell, the secretary of state, persuaded Bush that "public opinion has to be prepared before a move against Iraq is possible". Afghanistan was chosen as the softer option. If Jonathan Steele’s estimate in the Guardian is correct, some 20,000 people in Afghanistan paid the price of this debate with their lives.

3. Saddam Hassein. One of the PNAC group documents clearly shows that Bush and his most senior cabinet members had already planned an attack on Iraq before he took power in January 2001. In their plan entitled "Rebuilding American’s Defenses: Strategies, Forces and Resources for a New Century," reveals that the current members of Bush’s cabinet had already planned, before the 2000 presidential election, to take military control of the Gulf region whether Saddam Hussein is in power or not. "Even should Saddam pass from the scene," the plan says U.S. military bases in Saudi Arabia and Kuwait will remain, despite domestic opposition in the Gulf states to the permanent stationing of U.S. troops. Iran, it says, "may well prove as large a threat to U.S. interests as Iraq has." The 90-page PNAC document from September 2000 says: "The United States has for decades sought to play a more permanent role in Gulf regional security. While the unresolved conflict with Iraq provides the immediate justification, the need for a substantial American force presence in the Gulf transcends the issue of the regime of Saddam Hussein. The plan calls for Permanent Military Bases in Iraq to dominate the Middle East including neighboring Iran.

4. Global Dominance - a major aspect of Bush’s foreign policy has been spelled out in the PNAC blueprint? How does this document view our efforts for global dominance?

a) United States must seize the opportunity for global domination as a result of the world giving us this unique opportunity with the fall of the Soviet Union empire. We are now the sole world superpower. We need to seize this opportunity for the well- being of future generations.

b) Containment and deterrence course of action would not allow for the expansion of American power. In other words, a peaceful settlement is not in our best interest in Iraq. We must conquer Iraq (in the spirit of the Romans). There is no exit strategy for Iraq because the President has none! The Bush Administration plan to keep permanent military bases in Iraq from which to control the whole Middle East including a possible invasion of Iran and maybe Saudi Arabia in the future. Remember Iran was identified by George W. Bush as one of the three members of the "Axis of Evil". As we speak, Iran is being identified in the news as a nation developing nuclear weapons. If the Bush administration has their way we will soon be attacking Iran!

c) United States must conquer and occupy land areas even though we may be viewed as "American Internationalist". This may involve ignoring international opinion if that suits our U.S. interests. UN approval is helpful and desirable but becomes irrelevant if decisions of certain UN resolutions goes against our country’s wishes.

d) Must maintain military presence all over the world. Permanent U.S. military and economic domination of every region on the globe, unfettered by international treaty or concern. No ABM treaty, no Koyoto treaty, etc. to control our foreign policy. Pre-emptied attacks against perceived enemies may be needed. "The best defense is a good offense."

e) In due time the United States will emerge as a full-fledged global empire. That appears to be the plan!

5. Members of the present Bush Administration had important roles in the formulation of the PNAC document. The following individuals were a part of a group of conservative interventionists who have been outraged by the thought that the United States might be forfeiting its chance for global domination.(or empire as others outside their ranks say).

- Paul Wolfowitz is now Deputy Defense Secretary.

- John Bolton is Undersecretary of State.

- Stephen Cambone is head of the Pentagon’s Office of Program, Analysis and Evaluation.

- Eliot Cohen is a member of the Defense Policy Board, which advises Rumsfeld.

- Devon Cross is a member of the Defense Policy Board, which advises Rumsfeld.

- I. Lewis Libby is Chief of Staff to Vice President Dick Cheney.

- Dov Zakheim is Comptroller for the Defense Department.

- Other founders of PNAC include Vice-President Dick Cheney , Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, William J. Bennett (Reagan’s former Education

Secretary), and Zalmay Khalilzad (Bush’s Ambassador to Afghanistan).

6. Worldwide "Pax Americana". The U.S. needs to project sufficient power worldwide to enforce Pax Americana. The strategic "transformation" of the U.S. military into an imperialistic force of global domination would require a hugh increase in defense spending to "a minimum need to raise defense spending from 3 percent of Gross Domestic Product (GDP) to 3.8 percent with the addition of $15 to 20$ billion annually. It should be noted that George W. Bush had requested $379 billion in his most recent budget proposal which is exactly the 3.8 percent called for in the PNAC plan.

7. A "New Pearl Harbor". PNAC says that what was needed for America to dominate much of humanity and the world’s resources, it said, was "some catastrophic and catalyzing event - like a new Pearl Harbor". The attacks of September 11, 2001 provided the "new Pearl Harbor", described as "the opportunity of ages". The extremists who have since exploited September 11 come from the era of Ronald Reagan, when far-right groups and "think-tanks" were established to avenge the American "defeat" in Vietnam. In the 1990s, there was an added agenda: to justify the denial of a "peace dividend" following the cold war. The Project for the New American Century was formed, along with the American Enterprise Institute, the Hudson Institute and others that have since merge the ambitions of the Reagan administration with those of the current Bush regime. Time and again, September 11 is described as an "opportunity". It provided the necessary catalyst to put the global war plan into effect. Congress quickly allocated $40 billion to fund the "war on terrorism" shortly after September 11. In the last April’s New Yorker, the investigative reporter Nicholas Lemann wrote that Bush’s most senior adviser, Condoleezze Rice, told him she had called together senior members of the National Security County and asked them "to think about ‘how do you capitalize on these opportunities, which she compared with those of "1945 to 1947"; the start of the cold war. Since September 11, America has established bases at the gateways to all the major sources of fossil fuels, especially central Asia. The Unocal oil company is to build a pipeline across Afghanistan. Bush as scrapped the Kyoto Protocol on greenhouse gas emissions, the war crimes provisions of the International Criminal Court and the anti-ballistic missile treaty. He has said he will use nuclear weapons against non-nuclear states "if necessary". Under cover of propaganda about Iraq’s alleged weapons of mass destruction, the Bush regime is developing new weapons of mass destruction that undermine international treaties on biological and chemical warfare.

8. Envisions a stark expansion of our global military presence. Will require bases and stations within and beyond Western Europe and northeast Asia - as well as temporary access arrangements for the long-distance deployment of U.S. troops.

9. "At no time in history has the international security order been as conducive to American interests and ideals", the report said. "This challenge of this coming century is to preserve and enhance this ‘American peace’ "

10. This 2000 report reads like a "blueprint" for the current Bush defense policy. Most of what PNAC advocates, the Bush Administration has tried to accomplish. For example, the PNAC report urged the following:

- the repudiation of the anti-ballistic missile (ABM) treaty.

- commitment to a global missile defense (GMD) system.

The Bush Administration has followed this course on both counts.

11. PNAC advocated the "transformation" of the U.S. military to meet its expanded obligations, including the cancellation of such outmoded defense programs as the Crusader artillery system. That’s exactly the message being preached by Donald Rumsfeld and others.

12. PNAC urges the development of small nuclear warheads "required in targeting the very deep, underground hardened bunkers that are being built by many of our potential adversaries. This year the GOP-led U.S. House gave the Pentagon the green light to develop such a weapon, called the Robust Nuclear Earth Penetrator, while the Senate has so far balked at the decision. PNAC states that the United States should develop "bunker-buster" nuclear weapons and make "star wars" a national priority. This is now happening. The PNAC report said that, in the event of Bush taking power, Iraq should be a target. Guess what? Iraq is now our target!

13. Constabulary Duties: PNAC clearly identifies Iran, Iraq and North Korea as primary short-term targets, well before President Bush tagged them as the "Axis of Evil". In this report, the writers criticize the fact that in war planning against North Korea and Iraq, "past Pentagon war games have give little or no consideration to the force requirements necessary not only to defeat an attack but to remove these regimes from power." To preserve the Pax Americana, the report says U.S. forces will be required to perform "constabulary duties" - The United States acting as policeman of the world -- and says that such actions "demand American political leadership rather than that of the United Nations."

14. PNAC report advocates a much larger military presence spread over more of the globe, in addition to the roughly 130 nations in which U.S. troops are already deployed. More specifically, they argue that we need permanent military bases in the Middle East, in Southeast Europe, in Latin America and in Southeast Asia, where no such bases now exist. This explains why the Bush administration rushed to install U.S. troops in Georgia and the Philippines, as well as our eagerness to send military advisers to assist in the civil war in Colombia.

15. PNAC acknowledges its debt to an earlier document, drafted in 1992 by the Defense Department under the direction of Dick Cheney and Paul Wolfowitz who were the Secretary of Defense and Defense Undersecretary for Policy, respectively. PNAC was founded in the spring of 1997 by the well-known Zionist neo-conservatives Robert Kagan and William Kristol, writer for the Weekly Standard. The PNAC is part of the New Citizenship Project, whose chairman is also William Kristol, and is described as "a non-profit, educational organization whose goal is to promote American global leadership. Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, Jeb Bush, and Paul Wolfowitz signed a Statement of Principles of the PNAC on June 3, 1997, along with many of the other current members of Bush’s "war cabinet." Paul Wolfowitz was one of the directors of PNAC until he joined the Bush Administration in 2001.

16) A "core mission" for the transformed U.S. military is to "fight and decisively win multiple, simultaneous major theater wars," according to the PNAC.

17. Implications of a Pax Americana are immense.

What will be it’s effect on our Allies?

a) Once we assert the unilateral right to act as the world’s policeman, our allies will quickly recede into the background. We will be forces to spend American wealth and American blood protecting the peace while other nations redirect their wealth to such things as health care for the citizenry. Donald Kagan, co-chairman of the 2000 New Century project, acknowledges that likelihood. He says, "If our allies want a free ride, and they probably will, we can’t stop that," he says. But he also argues that the United States, given it unique position, has no choice but to act anyway.

b) Candidate George W. Bush certainly did not campaign on such a change. It is not something that he or others have dared to discuss honestly with the American people. To the contrary, in his foreign policy debate with Al Gore, Bush pointedly advocated a more humble foreign policy, a position calculated to appeal to voters leery of military intervention.

c) For the same reason, Kagan and others shy away from terms such as empire, understanding its connotations. But they also argue that it would be naive and dangerous to reject the role that history has thrust upon us. Kagan, for example, willingly embraces the idea that the United States would establish permanent military bases in a post-war Iraq. "I think that’s highly possible, " he says. "We will probably need a major concentration of forces in the Middle East over a long period of time. That will come at a price, but think of the price of not having it. When we have economic problems, it’s been caused by disruptions in our oil supply. If we have a force in Iraq, there will be no disruption in oil supplies."

18. War with Iraq as an object lesson for other nations. Rumsfeld and Kagan believe that a successful war against Iraq will produce other benefits, such as serving an object lesson for nations such as Iran and Syria. Rumsfeld, as befits his sensitive position, puts it rather gently. If a regime change were to take place in Iraq, other nations pursuing weapons of mass destruction "would get the message that having them...is attracting attention that is not favorable and is not helpful, " he says. Co-chairman Kagan says that "People worry a lot about how the Arab street is going to react, " he notes. "Well, I see that the Arab street has gotten very, very quiet since we started blowing things up."

19. Cost of such a global commitment would be enormous. In 2000, we spent $281 billion on our military, which was more than the next 11 nations combined. By 2003, our expenditures will have risen to $378 billion. In other words, the increase in our defense budget from 1999-2003 will be more than the total amount spent annually by China, our next largest competitor. This budget would allow the U.S. to fight and win multiple, simultaneous major theater wars". This has happened. Billions of dollars in additional defense spending are but the first step in the group’s long-term plan to transform the U.S. military into a global army enforcing a terroristic and bloody Pax Americana around the world.

20. The lure of empire is ancient and powerful, and over the millennia it has driven men to commit terrible crimes on its behalf. But with the end of the Cold War and the disappearance of the Soviet Union, a global empire was essentially laid at the feet of the United States. To the chagrin of some, we did not seize it at the time, in large part because the American people have never been comfortable with themselves as a "New Rome".

21. In the debate whether to invade Iraq, we are really debating the role that the United States will play in the years and decades to come. In August of 2002, Defense Policy Board chairman and PNAC member Richard Perle heard a policy briefing from a think tank associated with the Rand Corporation. According to the Washington Post and The Nation, the final slide of this presentation described "Iraq as the tactical pivot, Saudi Arabia as the strategic pivot, and Egypt as the prize" in a war that would purportedly be about ridding the world of Saddam Hussein’s weapons. Bush has deployed massive forces into the Mideast region, while simultaneously engaging American forces in the Philippines and playing nuclear chicken with North Korea. Somewhere in all this lurks at least one of the "major theater wars" desired by the September 2000 PNAC report.

22. Are peace and security best achieved by seeking strong alliances and international consensus, led by the United States, or is it necessary to take a more unilateral approach, accepting and enhancing the global dominance that, according to some, history has thrust upon us? If we do decide to seize empire, we should make that decision knowingly, as a democracy. The price of maintaining an empire is always high.

23) Richard Perle. He is one of George W. Bush’s "thinkers". He was interviewed by John Pilger when he was advising Reagan and when he spoke about "total war", he sounded like a madman. Perle recently used these terms again in describing America’s "war on terror". "No stages.", he said. "This is total war. We are fighting a variety of enemies. There are lots of them out there. All this talk about first we are going to do Afghanistan, then we will embrace it entirely and we don’t try to piece together clever diplomacy, but just wage a total war... our children will sing great songs about us years from now." This Perle is one of the founders of the "Project for the New American Century."

24) PNAC funding sources for this "neo-con" Washington-based "think-tank" organization. It is funded by three foundations closely tied to Persian Gulf oil and weapons and defense industries, drafted the war plan for U.S. global domination through military power.

25) Three Principles of PNAC.

1) The group’s essential demand was for hefty increases in defense spending. "We need to increase defense spending significantly if we are to carry out our global responsibilities today and modernize our armed forces for the future, ".

This increase in defense spending is to bring about two of the other principles:

2) "to challenge regimes hostile to our interests and values."

3) "to accept responsibility for America’s unique role in preserving and extending an international order friendly to our security, our prosperity, and our principles."

26) "This is a blueprint for United States world domination - a new world order of their making, "Tam Dalyell, British parliamentarian and critic of the war policy from the Labor Party said. "These are the thought processes of fantasist Americans who want to control the world. This is garbage from think-tanks stuffed with chicken-hawks," Dalyell said, "men who have never seen the horror of war but are in love with the idea of war. William Rivers Pitt wrote on February 25, 2003, "Above all else, PNAC desires and demands one thing: The establishment of a global American empire to bend the will of all nations. They chafe at the idea that the United States, the last remaining superpower, does not do more by way of economic and military force to bring the rest of the world under the umbrella of a new socio-economic Pax Americana."

27) Joy-Ann Lomena-Reid in a March 12, 2003 article for Common Dreams states, "The Bush administration has so damaged its own argument and credibility with the rest of the world regarding its motives for war (the Project for the New American Century may not get ink on American TV but it’s big news overseas), that we need a proxy force to be the one taking Kirkuk. If our soldiers are seen putting out the fires set by Hussein to deny us what he and much of the world sees as our prime objective -- control of Iraq’s vast oil wealth -- then we win the war and lose the aftermath. Saddam Hussein has all but laid it out for the world -- America is attacking Iraq to steal her oil, and Iraq would rather but it themselves then give it to Bush and his cabal. Better, then to let the British steal it for us."

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Sources used for these talking points:

1. A copy of the PNAC document entitled, "Rebuilding America’s Defenses: Strategy, Forces and Resources For a New Century" .

This document is available in .pdf format and can be loaded unto your computer screen using Adobe Acrobat Reader which is available free of charge on the internet.

2. Using a good search engine such as "Goggle", type Project for the New American Century and you will obtain numerous pages of reports written about PNAC and it’s serious consequences. Some of the articles obtained with the aid of the computer are listed below. These provided the basis for the "Talking Points" in this manuscript.

"The president’s real goal in Iraq", Jay Bookman, author, The Atlantic Journal-Constitution, September 29, 2002.

"America’s Pearl Harbor", Christopher Bollyn, author, American Free Press.

"The Project for the New American Century", William Rivers Pitt, New York Times, February 25, 2003

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