Conspiracy Facts: The Poll

[beachnut]

You're Orwell's worst nightmare, suggesting as PNAC does that peace is war and war is peace. Orwell warned about those who cannot read inference, but swallow the euphemisms of double speak.

You failed to heed that warning. Believing ideas from the 9/11 truth movement is the proof you do not recognize double speak, and mislabel it when it is not around. You have serious problems, you are in a cult and you are happy as a pot calling the kettle black. Good job on being so far gone, you label those who are not, what you are.

 

[CHF]

Are you serious? In all of your time here you have not come across that now infamous quote?

I suppose there's some spin that will allow the sycophants to look past it, but here it is for the millionth time:

"Further, the process of transformation,
even if it brings revolutionary change, is
likely to be a long one, absent some
catastrophic and catalyzing event – like a
new Pearl Harbor."

http://www.newamericancentury.org/RebuildingAmericasDefenses.pdf

Gee, now what might constitue a New Pearl Harbor?

The process of upgrading the military will be slow unless there's a new Pearl Harbor...and the document proceeds on the assumption that there will not be such an event!

Let me guess...you haven't read a damn word of PNAC except for the above quote, correct?

 

[RedIbis]

The process of upgrading the military will be slow unless there's a new Pearl Harbor...and the document proceeds on the assumption that there will not be such an event!

Let me guess...you haven't read a damn word of PNAC except for the above quote, correct?

That's your response? Do you think they will just come out and say, "well if the attack doesn't come we could always just cook one up ourselves?"

If you don't think this "catalyzing" "New Pearl Harbor" fits exactly what the document has been requiring then it is you who has not read the document.

 

[Gravy]

The process of upgrading the military will be slow unless there's a new Pearl Harbor...and the document proceeds on the assumption that there will not be such an event!

Let me guess...you haven't read a damn word of PNAC except for the above quote, correct?

Ding! You've won a kewpie doll! Would you like this ugly, ratty great big one, or this cute, cuddly little one?

 

[MIKILLINI]

That's your response? Do you think they will just come out and say, "well if the attack doesn't come we could always just cook one up ourselves?"

If you don't think this "catalyzing" "New Pearl Harbor" fits exactly what the document has been requiring then it is you who has not read the document.

Where in this document does it imply a catastrophic and catalyzing event is a desired intention? Please show the intent, if you can.

 

[CHF]

If you don't think this "catalyzing" "New Pearl Harbor" fits exactly what the document has been requiring then it is you who has not read the document.

Alrighty then...

Show me the PNAC quote that calls for an invasion of Afghanistan.

Show me the PNAC quote that calls for an invasion of Iraq.

Show me the PNAC quote that calls for the Apache chopper replacement to be canceled.

 

[RedIbis]

Where in this document does it imply a catastrophic and catalyzing event is a desired intention? Please show the intent, if you can.

Post #41 for the millionth and one time. Now read it slow. We agree the document is about transforming the military from the underfunded Clinton administration.

But gee, transformation will take a long time, unless...

 

[CHF]

Post #41 for the millionth and one time. Now read it slow. We agree the document is about transforming the military from the underfunded Clinton administration.

But gee, transformation will take a long time, unless...

If by "transformation" you mean "fighting a costly house-to-house ground war in the Middle East" then yes, I suppose 9/11 was the event they needed.

But I don't think that's what PNAC had in mind.

I'm sure you have quotes that prove otherwise. Right?

 

[PhantomWolf]

Where in this document does it imply a catastrophic and catalyzing event is a desired intention? Please show the intent, if you can.

But you have to read between the lines man, see what isn't there. That they say a new Pearl Habor would cause the transformation to occur faster (funnily enough 9/11 hasn't, it's had exactly the opposite effect) really meant that they had to have one to get any transformation. When they said that in the effect to preserve peace by having a militray strong enough to decisively win two wars simultaneously, they really meant that they wanted to have two wars that would drag on indefinately. When they say that they wanted to make sure that the forses in the middle east were presevred to maintain a stable Middle East, they really meant they wanted to start a war there to destablize the heck out of it. When they said that they wanted to have a large enough force that was in top shape, replacing the old worn out equipment that the US military currently relied on, they really meant that they wanted to throw that tired equipment into battle and make it more tired and worn out. Went they said that they needed to increase the numbers in service so that they would have enough people to deal with policing and peace keepings missions as well as having enough reserves to fight a war and replace those on the field from the troops still stationed at home, they really meant that they wanted to drain their resourses dry, force those enlisted to serve beyond their tours, increase the drop out and desertion rates, decrease the recruitment numbers and overall cause major manpower issues all around.

As such while virtually none of the things they suggested doing in their paper has happened they way they susggested, since that wasn't what they actually ment, what happened is a perfect match to their intent.

 

[PhantomWolf]

Post #41 for the millionth and one time. Now read it slow. We agree the document is about transforming the military from the underfunded Clinton administration.

But gee, transformation will take a long time, unless...

And getting safety equipment installed on railway crossings over here takes a long time unless someone gets killed on them. Does that mean that each time someone gets killed on the crossings that it's really a Black Op to get them to upgrade the crossing safety barriers? The paper didn't even look at how such a transformation could be done in the event of a possible attack, it only looked at how it should be done on the assumption that such didn't happen. And the really funny thing? Even though 9/11 happened, virtually none of the papers recommendations has been taken up, in fact if anything, the result has been exactly the opposite of what the paper was wanting. How do you explain that is they set 9/11 in motion to achieve the paper's goals?

 

[Hokulele]

Since it appears that RedIbis will not read the quote he selected in context, here is the last sentence from that very same paragraph.

Thus, this report advocates a two-stage process of change - transition and transformation - over the coming decades.

So in effect, they are advocating taking time in this process. In other words, a catacalysmic change would be the last thing they want.

 

[jaydeehess]

They have the much larger military budget and they have extended the USA's military might in the middle east. however that budget has been eaten up by the continuing war in Iraq and the military is stretched just to maintian what it has in Afghanistan and Iraq due to enormous blunders preside over by prominent members of the administration, Cheney, and Rumsfeld specifically with a lot of incompetance illustrated by GWB as well.

Although the PNAC plan in general would have made anti-USA sentiment increase in the short term, had it been carried out in a thoughtful manner with an eye to bettering the life of the populace of the coutries involved, it just might have worked. It was an incredibly arrogant and selfish plan but carried out properly, yeah, it might have worked out.

However in practice Cheney thought that the simple act of ousting Saddam would garner great popular sentiment amoung the Iraqi civilians that would by itself create peace in that country. He was wrong, in fact he was so very wrong it boggles the mind.

In practice, Rumsfeld thought that all that mattered was ousting the former regime and since that could be done with relatively few troops and a good amount of technology that's all he sent in. When confronted with the fact of the looting of hospitals and museums and the widespread anarchy his response was, "stuff happens". His failure to even have a plan to secure the country after the initial war with the administration of Hussein illustrates his utter incompetance and results in a failure to advance the goals of PNAC.In fact he was so very incompetant it again boggles the mind.

In Afghanistan much of the world backed the USA at least morally. It had been attacked in a horrible fashion and those in charge of the attacks should be brought to justice. In fact , originally the USA demanded that the Taliban hand over bin Laden (even though they knew full well that the Taliban neither had the will or the power to do so). The better part of a deacde later the USA seems to have launched a war against that country on those grounds only to abandon that goal of capturing bin Laden and left the securing of that country largely to others thus squandering that great world support.

So, yes, the attacks were pretty much what PNAC stated could be used to fast track their goals BUT the administration was incompetant ( at pretty much everything) in using it and acheiving those goals.

 

[CHF]

Rev 91, I'm still waiting for those PNAC quotes.

 

[mjd1982]

It expresses neither a need nor a desire for a “New Pearl Harbour”/”catastrophic and catalyzing event.” In fact, it assumes such an event will not occur and goes on to discuss how to bring about the “process of transformation”.

This would only be the interpretation from a catastrophically slack reading og the document. Let's have a closer look.

The quote refers to the technological and operational transformations that have been outlined in the doc

The United
States cannot
simply declare a
“strategic pause”
while
experimenting
with new
technologies and
operational
concepts....

A transformation strategy that solely
pursued capabilities for projecting force
from the United States, for example, and
sacrificed forward basing and presence,
would be at odds with larger American policy goals and would trouble American
allies.

(Note here also the stress on the need for this transformation to be pursued under one global umbrella, a la the WOT)

It then goes onto the famous quote

Further, the process of transformation,
even if it brings revolutionary change, is
likely to be a long one, absent some
catastrophic and catalyzing event – like a
new Pearl Harbor.

The question is a simple one. Which transformation do they deem more propitious? One that takes many decades, or rather one that happens sooner and faster? Whether a group of ideologues would want their peace love and happiness bringing transformation to happen in yrs, or in decades, is clearly not a question that any rational person would need ask, but on this forum I am happy to make it clear for you all. We can get our answer, quite simply, from the rest of the paragraph (I have outlined this many times, to no sensible reponse, on the CF thread.)

A decision to suspend or terminate aircraft
carrier production, as recommended by this
report and as justified by the clear direction
of military technology, will cause great
upheaval. Likewise, systems entering
production today – the F-22 fighter, for
example – will be in service inventories for
decades to come. Wise management of this
process will consist in large measure of
figuring out the right moments to halt
production of current-paradigm weapons
and shift to radically new designs. The
expense associated with some programs can
make them roadblocks to the larger process
of transformation – the Joint Strike Fighter
program, at a total of approximately $200
billion, seems an unwise investment.

The segments I have bolded show the reason for the length of transformation- difficulties. Roadblocks, barriers, obstructions etc, all of which a new PH would help bypass. Thus, to state that they did not deem a new PH propitious, is to say that they wanted a difficult and long transformation process, rather than a faster and easier one. Given that this is nonsense, we conclude quite easily that a new PH is deemed propitious to policy.

Just to pre empt some of the sillier, and categorically refuted responses to this, the doc does state that:

this report advocates a two-stage process of
change – transition and transformation –
over the coming decades.

This is not a problem, if one is honest to ask oneself a simple question- what is the alternative here? The doc has to advocate one course or the other, else it would be highly deficient. So either the doc can state openly "We advocate the ocurrence of a new PH"; or they can state what they did. It is obvious, again to all sensible minds, that the former is not really an option, hence the latter. And in any case, this does not, logically preclude the conclusion that a new PH was considered propitious to policy.

 

[DGM]

This is not a problem, if one is honest to ask oneself a simple question- what is the alternative here? The doc has to advocate one course or the other, else it would be highly deficient. So either the doc can state openly "We advocate the ocurrence of a new PH"; or they can state what they did. It is obvious, again to all sensible minds, that the former is not really an option, hence the latter. And in any case, this does not, logically preclude the conclusion that a new PH was considered propitious to policy.

So anyone that disagrees with you is dishonest and illogical.

 

[mjd1982]

ETA I should state that this deals with most of the posters who feel the doc states that a new PH would be bad for policy.

How about you read the rest of the paper?

Nowhere does it say that there is a need for such an event. It says that the defence forces need to be transformed and it is likely to be a slow programme that does it. It then outlines how that slow programme should be done. It doesn't rely on, nor need an event to cause rapid change, it merely states that without such occuring the change will be slow. The entire paper is based on the premise that the US has fought hard to have the peace it had in the 90's and that as such they needed to prepare and transform the military so they were ready for future comflict as a deterant to such occuring, that the current (late 90's) policies of cutting defence budgets and standing down units was bad because it weakened the US defences to the point where other countries might see them as weak and take advantage and destroy the hard earned peace. The result of 9/11 is exactly the opposite of what the PNAC report was wanting. It wanted a fully equipped, fully trained force that was able to engage in and desisively win multiple theatres of combat standing by as a deterrent to war. What the US has now is exactly the opposite, a poorly equipped, poorly trained force split in two and bogged down in a running war they aren't winning. The PNAC wanted the focus of the US forces to be on South East Asia, they considered the Middle East to currently (late 90's) be stable and secure. Now the Middle east is a mess and Southeast Asia is totally forgotten. Everything the paper said would be bad for the country has happened. How about focusing less on one paragraph that doesn't say what you claim it does, and read the other 90 pages!

I think I have dealt with the first part of yur post above, but just to be clear about the 2nd- the point behind the doc is, strictly speaking, the preservation and entrenchment of US global hegemony throughout the 21st century.

In sum, the 1990s have been a “decade
of defense neglect.” This leaves the next
president of the United States with an
enormous challenge: he must increase
military spending to preserve American
geopolitical leadership, or he must pull back
from the security commitments that are the
measure of America’s position as the
world’s sole superpower and the final
guarantee of security, democratic freedoms
and individual political rights. This choice
will be among the first to confront the
president: new legislation requires the
incoming administration to fashion a
national security strategy within six months
of assuming office, as opposed to waiting a
full year, and to complete another
quadrennial defense review three months
after that. In a larger sense, the new
president will choose whether today’s
“unipolar moment,” to use columnist
Charles Krauthammer’s phrase for
America’s current geopolitical preeminence,
will be extended along with the peace and
prosperity that it provides.

This is congruent with PNAC's stated goal that

American leadership is good both for America and for the world; and that such leadership requires military strength, diplomatic energy and commitment to moral principle.

(A quick note about that statement- of the 3 characteristics they list, 1 is subjective, and the 2nd depends on the 1st)

I dont think it needs to be outlined that neo cons are not interested in peace, rather power, and the doc is based on that outline. In this regard, RAD should be seen more accurately as neo con parlance for "Furthering and Entrenching US hegemony", since "defense/national security", in political, not just neo con parlance, means hegemony.

Now, this touches on the WOT. I would like to know, and maybe I will start another thread on this, what you OTers believe the WOT to be? Do you think it is

a) a war on Terror?
b) a war on Terrorism?
c) a war on Jihadism?
d) something else?

If you go to p3 of my CF thread, there is a [url="http://www.internationalskeptics.com/forums/showthread.php?t=84473&page=3]post[/url] where I dismantle Gravy's LC guide, PNAC section, and I show how each of these is ridiculous. I also show what the WOT truly constitutes- programs designed at further US hegemony, through radical expressions of military strength.

It should be thus realised, that this is the goal of the WOT, regardless of the difficulties they have had in executing it, due largely to their incompetence in Iraq, as it was the goal of RAD. The 2 are so similar it is astonishing.

 

[mjd1982]

How much is William Rodriguez charging for appearances these days? (On edit: it only stands to reason... Rodriguez had full access to the building, and he somehow missed out on all those dudes planting explosives, UNLESS...)

During the 1992 election cycle, it was believed that continued recession would benefit the Democrats more than the Republicans.

This was encapsulated in the phrase "It's the economy, stupid":

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/It's_the_economy,_stupid

The economic indicators in question continued to decline, and it is believed that the election of Bill Clinton was a result of the perceived economic decline.

From this, do you conclude that the Democrats actively worked to sabotage the economy in order to win the White House in 1992?

The Islamist radicals of the type which carried out 9/11 have succeeded fantastically at provoking counterproductive behavior by the United States.

It is widely believed that the downfall of the Soviet Union was precipitated in large measure by its adventure in Afghanistan, and President Bush's decision to open a second theatre in Iraq is a "bonus".

Rodirguez charged nothing for his talk in London, and I dont believe he charges anyone. He was staying with members of the Truth Movement while in London, as he had no money to live in a hotel down here.

Why do you cast an aspersion like that, when its totally unsupported?

 

[mjd1982]

No...I say again..No. But if you go from Mjds perceived view, it's more in the "design"..The PNAC doc is the "design" that needed a catastrophic and catalyzing event to cause implementation of transformations to be made more easily. The "execution" had to take place before the 2001 QDR came out. How would this be known? Why the smoking gun of the French intelligence warning, is how they knew. Mjd has determined that this has not been addressed to his satisfaction.

ETA: Of course Mjd, you should read here: http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/world/20070416-1211-france-9-11.html

and here: http://www.craigmurray.co.uk/archives/2007/04/french_hijack_w.html

I have no idea what your talking about. Would you explain?

 

[mjd1982]

But you have to read between the lines man, see what isn't there. That they say a new Pearl Habor would cause the transformation to occur faster (funnily enough 9/11 hasn't, it's had exactly the opposite effect) really meant that they had to have one to get any transformation. When they said that in the effect to preserve peace by having a militray strong enough to decisively win two wars simultaneously, they really meant that they wanted to have two wars that would drag on indefinately. When they say that they wanted to make sure that the forses in the middle east were presevred to maintain a stable Middle East, they really meant they wanted to start a war there to destablize the heck out of it. When they said that they wanted to have a large enough force that was in top shape, replacing the old worn out equipment that the US military currently relied on, they really meant that they wanted to throw that tired equipment into battle and make it more tired and worn out. Went they said that they needed to increase the numbers in service so that they would have enough people to deal with policing and peace keepings missions as well as having enough reserves to fight a war and replace those on the field from the troops still stationed at home, they really meant that they wanted to drain their resourses dry, force those enlisted to serve beyond their tours, increase the drop out and desertion rates, decrease the recruitment numbers and overall cause major manpower issues all around.

As such while virtually none of the things they suggested doing in their paper has happened they way they susggested, since that wasn't what they actually ment, what happened is a perfect match to their intent.

Just to deal with this post quickly- I have addressed this toooooo many times now, but will do so again. If I'm honest I dont think that these sorts of assertions would be made by the relatively intelligent people I believe you to be, were you able to look at 911 without complete self deception.

To take one example from this post, they did indeed call for the abiltiy to fight and win 2 theatre wars. Yet, they have failed to do so. This is because they have screwed up. It is because they are incompetent. It is, in short, a failure of execution. It is not because they did not see this as a aim to be pursued. It is not because this was not part of their design. On the contrary, it was almost certainly part of their design to be able to fight and win 2 major wars at the same time, hence why they engaged in such. (I think I'm right in saying its the 1st time in US history that 2 unconnected major foreign wars have been waged simultaneously?)

It is this distinction between design and execution, a very simple one in truth, that gets missed so egregiously by so many on this board, but one that is so very important.

ETA incidentally I dont know what Jaydeehess's ideological bent is, but he is pretty close to the mark in his post

 

[Sabrina]

In other words, the OP was right; it was a futile attempt to move beyond this ridiculous point and onto separate points in the debate.

Nice try though.