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The following is an excerpt from the book, "The Exception to the Rulers" by Amy Goodman, journalist for the best independent media out there, Democracy Now! The PNAC The blueprint for what has happened since 9/11 was drawn up years earlier, by the Project for the New American Century (PNAC), a think tank formed in 1997 "to promote American global leadership." Its founders are a who's who of the neoconservative movement, which seamlessly morphed into the top officialdom of the Bush II administration: Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, Vice President Dick Cheney, Cheney's chief of staff L.Scooter Libby, Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz, Defense Policy Board member Richard Perle, and National Security Council staff member (and convicted liar) Elliot Abrams,* among others. The PNAC members had a reputation around Washington, explained Ray McGovern, a retired CIA analyst with twenty-seven years' experience. A former intelligence briefer for Vice President George Bush, McGovern observed, "When we saw these people coming back in town, all of us said . . . 'Oh my God, the crazies are back.' " McGovern said their wild-eyed geopolitical schemes would typically go "right into the circular file." In September 2000, PNAC issued a report that called upon the United States to dominate global resources and, well, the globe. The key to realizing this was "some catastrophic and catalyzing event-like a new Pearl Harbor." As investigative reporter John Pilger has written, "[PNAC] an recommended an increase in arms-spending by $48 billion so that Washington could 'fight and win multiple, simultaneous major theatre wars.' This has happened. It said the United States should develop 'bunker-buster' nuclear weapons and make 'star wars' a national priority. This is happening. It said that, in the event of Bush taking power, Iraq should be a target. And so it is."31 Weapons of mass destruction and Iraq itself were mere pretexts for larger schemes. According to PNAC: "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." And so on the morning of September 12, 2001, Donald Rumsfeld reacted to the World Trade Center and Pentagon attacks by declaring to Bush's cabinet that the United States should immediately attack Iraq.33 It didn't matter then or later that Iraq had no connection to Al Qaeda or the 9/11 attacks. The neoconservatives, annoyed that we merely owned the pumps and not the oil, were itching to dominate the world. The facts could be molded to fit their designs. Meanwhile, the Bush team saw 9/11 as a potential boon to its cronies. All that was needed was a plan-and the PNAC blueprint was conveniently available. National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice told senior National Security Council staff "to think about 'how do you capitalize on these opportunities?' " She compared the situation with "1945 to 1947," the start of the cold war. The Bush people were eager to respond to the call. "Since 11 September," reports Pilger, "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 has scrapped the Kyoto Protocol on greenhouse gas emissions, the war crimes provisions of the International Criminal Court, and the anti-ballistic missile treaty." And that's just the start. "[T]he Bush regime is developing new weapons of mass destruction that undermine international treaties on biological and chemical warfare." So useful have terrorist attacks been to advancing the neocon agenda that hawks are intent on provoking more. As William Arkin wrote in the Los Angeles Times, Rumsfeld's Defense Science Board recommended in 2002 the creation of a super secret "Proactive, Preemptive Operations Group (P2OG) to bring together CIA and military covert action, information warfare, intelligence, and coverand deception. Among other things, this body would launch secret operations aimed at 'stimulating reactions' among terrorists and states possessing weapons of mass destruction-that is, for instance, prodding terrorist cells into action and exposing themselves to 'quick-response' attacks by U.S. forces. Such tactics would . . . 'signal to harboring states that their sovereignty will be at risk.' " An estimated 4,000 Afghan civilians have died, and up to 9,600 Iraqi civilians have been killed in pursuit of this pipe dream of global military hegemony. But the worldwide war plan is far more ambitious. As General Wesley Clark notes in his book Winning Modern Wars: Iraq, Terrorism, and the American Empire, he was informed privately by a top Pentagon colleague that the war on terror was part of "a five-year campaign plan, he said, and there were a total of seven countries, beginning with Iraq, then Syria, Lebanon, Libya, Iran, Somalia, and Sudan." Clark, a former NATO Supreme Allied Commander, recounted, "I left the Pentagon that afternoon deeply concerned." Across the Atlantic, Michael Meacher, Tony Blair's environment minister from May 1997 to June 2003, wrote in the British newspaper The Guardian that the PNAC report is "a blueprint for U.S. world domination." September 11 was the perfect excuse for turning the blueprint into reality, Meacher says. But to what end? "The overriding motivation . . . is that the U.S. and the UK are beginning to run out of secure hydrocarbon energy supplies. By 2010 the Muslim world will control as much as 60% ofth e world's oil production and, even more importantly, 95% of remaining global oil export capacity. As demand is increasing, so supply is decreasing, continually since the 1960s." The "global war on terrorism," Meacher concludes, "has the hallmarks of a political myth propagated to pave the way for a wholly different agenda-the U.S. goal of world hegemony, built around securing by force command over the oil supplies required to drive the whole project." Back to News Articles