From: Antiwar

In the early-1990s, there was a group of ideologues and power-politicians on the fringe of the Republican Party’s far-right. The members of this group in 1997 would found The Project for the New American Century (PNAC); their aim was to prepare for the day when the Republicans regained control of the White House – and, it was hoped, the other two branches of government as well – so that their vision of how the U.S. should move in the world would be in place and ready to go, straight off-the-shelf into official policy.

This PNAC group was led by such heavy hitters as Donald Rumsfeld, Dick Cheney, James Woolsey, Paul Wolfowitz, Richard Perle, Bill Kristol, James Bolton, Zalmay M. Khalilzad, William Bennett, Dan Quayle, Jeb Bush.

…with the Supreme Court’s selection of George W. Bush in 2000. The “outsiders” from PNAC were now powerful “insiders,” placed in important positions from which they could exert maximum pressure on U.S. policy: Cheney is Vice President, Rumsfeld is Defense Secretary, Wolfowitz is Deputy Defense Secretary, I. Lewis Libby is Cheney’s Chief of Staff, Elliot Abrams is in charge of Middle East policy at the National Security Council, Dov Zakheim is comptroller for the Defense Department, John Bolton is Undersecretary of State, Richard Perle is chair of the Defense Policy advisory board at the Pentagon, former CIA director James Woolsey is on that panel as well, etc. etc. (PNAC’s chairman, Bill Kristol, is the editor of Rupert Murdoch‘s The Weekly Standard.) In short, PNAC had a lock on military policy-creation in the Bush Administration.

But, in order to unleash their foreign/military campaigns without taking all sorts of flak from the traditional wing of the conservative GOP – which was more isolationist, more opposed to expanding the role of the federal government, more opposed to military adventurism abroad – they needed a context that would permit them free rein. The events of 9/11 rode to their rescue. (In one of their major reports, written in 2000, they noted that “the process of transformation, even if it brings revolutionary change, is likely to be a long one, absent some catastrophic and catalyzing even – like a new Pearl Harbor.”)

After those terrorist attacks, the Bush Administration used the fear generated in the general populace as their cover for enacting all sorts of draconian measures domestically (the Patriot Act, drafted earlier, was rushed through Congress in the days following 9/11; few members even read it), and as their rationalization for launching military campaigns abroad.

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Related:

REBUILDING AMERICA’S DEFENSES: Strategy, Forces and Resources For a New Century — A Report of The Project for the New American Century September 2000 (Threat countries are listed, many of which we’ve regime-changed)

Rockefeller Predicted “Event” To Trigger War Eleven Months Before 9/11

PNAC member, Ambassador John Bolton admits U.S. wars were to protect U.S. oil interests

All of my Real Reason for U.S. Wars = NWO! posts (latest appear first)

(video) WOW! In an interview from 2007, 4-star General, Wesley Clark, said that he was told at the Pentagon that the US government had decided to ‘take down’ seven countries in five years: Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Libya, Somalia, Sudan & Iran. [The motivation, he said, was to control the region’s oil, not to fight terrorism. Everyone in America should watch this interview but, unfortunately, the mainstream media will resist that mightily.]