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���� ���� ���� The Players

 

 

Since its founding in 1997, the Project for a New American Century has always sought, and continues to seek, individuals of power and influence from academia, business, and politics.� You may notice some familiar names on the list of current staff, but the most profound connections exist between the extensive roster of alumni, nearly half of whom serve in a direct capacity within the Bush administration.

 

PNAC�s current staff:

William KristoL, Chairman - Gary SchmitT, Executive Director

Robert Kagan - Ellen BorK, Deputy Director - Lewis E. Lehrman

Thomas DonnellY, Senior Fellow - Randy Scheunemann

Mark Gerson - Christopher Maletz, Assistant Director

Bruce P. Jackson - Daniel McKivergaN, Deputy Director

Reuel Marc GerechT, Senior Fellow, Director of the Middle East Initiative

 

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Notable PNAC Alumni:��������������������������������������������

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�������� DICK CHENEY

 

Vice President Dick Cheney was a founding member of the Project for the New American Century, and along with others mentioned here was a signatory to its Statement of Principles.� At the time that Cheney was helping PNAC to build pressure for war with Iraq � well before 9/11/2001 � he was also serving as CEO of Halliburton, a company that has profited extensively from the war.� While hardly alone in his position to profit from an aggressively militarized US foreign policy, Cheney�s deep and numerous conflicts of interest are exemplary of the inherency of substitution of corporate interests for public interests within the neoconservative ideology.

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�� DONALD RUMSFELD

 

Current Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld signed his name to a number of PNAC�s statements and �letters� throughout the late 1990�s, including the 1998 Letter to President Clinton on Iraq, and the voluminous rebuilding america�s defenses.� Rumsfeld�s association with the Project for a New American Century, as well as his contributions to its proposals, make clear his ideological and political predisposition to frame foreign policy in terms of military hegemony.

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���������� ������������ ����������� ��������� PAUL WOLFOWITZ

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Paul Wolfowitz, presently deputy secretary of defense, had a tenure in PNAC that ran concurrently to Rumsfeld�s.� A prot�g� of political philosopher Leo Strauss, Wolfowitz has often been credited with being a driving intellectual force behind the neoconservatives.� Wolfowitz admitted in a recent Vanity Fair article that the Bush administration chose to focus on allegation about Iraq�s weapons of mass destruction for "Bureaucratic" reasons.� He also stated, on the topic of a September 15, 2001 meeting with Bush at Camp David, that �there was a long discussion during the day about what place if any Iraq should have in a counterterrorist strategy. On the surface of the debate it at least appeared to be about not whether but when. There seemed to be a kind of agreement that yes it should be, but the disagreement was whether it should be in the immediate response or whether you should concentrate simply on Afghanistan first.�

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����������� ����������������������� ������ ������RICHARD PERLE

 

Richard Perle, known to friends as the prince of darkness, still sits on the Defense Policy Board; he resigned his chairmanship of the body in March, 2003, due to controversy over his financial stake in the war on Iraq.� Aside from his participation in PNAC, Perle personally wrote a 1996 piece titled A clean break: a new strategy for securing the realm, which argued that broader regional security for Israel must begin with regime change in Iraq.

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���������� ������������������������ ������������������� WILLIAM KRISTOL

 

Kristol, also a Straussian, was the founder of the Project for a New American Century.� He also publishes the neoconservative journal the weekly standard, bankrolled by Rupert Murdoch, owner of FOX NEWS, to whom Kristol also contributes.� Kristol�s many nebulous ties are indicative of PNAC�s stealthy permeation of diverse instruments of American media and policymaking.

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����� I. Lewis �Scooter� Libby

 

Assistant to the President and chief of staff to the vice president, Libby was a signatory to the 2000 PNAC manifesto rebuilding america�s defenses, which urged military action against Iraq, decreased international cooperation, and restriction of American civil liberties.� Later, he became the author of the now-controversial report that Colin Powell called �bullshit� before begrudgingly presenting it to the UN.� This manipulation of intelligence data was perhaps the most profound example thus far of neoconservative ideology tempering decision-making.

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���������� ������������ ����������������������������������� ���������� ��WILLIAM J. BENNETT

 

Bennett, former US Secretary of Education, is one of several links between the neoconservatives and the Reagan administration.� A frequent commentator on religion and morality, despite recent troubles, Bennett is an extremely wealthy patron of right-wing media, and a committed ideologue.

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This is only a sampling of the overlap between today�s power structure and yesterday�s radical political movement, and certainly an arbitrary stopping point.� The web formed by the many-fold corporate, ideological, and personal connections between this single think tank and those populating our current government is too dense to unravel at one time.� Simply googling any of the following names is guaranteed to turn up some more interesting links:

 

Elliott Abrams -- Richard L. Armitage -- Jeffrey Bergner -- John Bolton -- Paula Dobriansky Francis Fukuyama -- Robert Kagan -- Zalmay Khalilzad -- Peter W. Rodman -- William Schneider, Jr. -- Vin Weber -- R. James Woolsey -- Robert B. Zoellick