What the heck is a 'neocon'? - Part III

One of the neoconservative script lines is that neocons have had little if any influence on American policies, stretching the truth - never mind logic - to make theircase.

It's part of the thread in recent articles that appear to be designed to muddy the issue as to who and what and why they are. For instance, David Brooks says:

'The full-mooners fixated on a think tank called the Project for the New American Century, which has a staff of five' [ in his aptly-named The Era of Distortion 01/06/2004]

Following the same script, Max Boot claims:

'The Project for the New American Century, the leading neocon foreign policy think tank, has a staff of five.' [Think Again: Neocons Jan/Feb 2004]

Depending on how they define "staff" (and what "is" is?) there may be some tortuous way to make those statements technically factual.

But the truth is that the Project for a New American Century (PNAC) is much larger than that, and members and like-minded supporters have worked their way into the highest levels of this administration.

To start with, there were 25 signatories to their original "Statement of Principles" in 1997. These included names you'll recognize:

Richard "Dick" Cheney (Vice-President);
I. Lewis "Scoot" Libby (Cheney's chief-of-staff);
Aaron Friedberg (Cheney's Deputy National Security Adviser);
Donald Rumsfeld (Secretary of Defense);
Paul Wolfowitz (Deputy Secretary of Defense);
Peter W. Rodman (Assistant Secretary of Defense);
Elliott Abrams (National Security Council);
Paula J. Dobriansky (Undersecretary of State for Global Affairs);
Zalmay Khalilzad (Ambassador to Afghanistan);
Eliot Cohen (Defense Policy Board);
Henry S. Rowen (Defense Policy Board);
and others including Jeb Bush, Steve Forbes, Frank Gaffney, Donald Kagan and more.

Another 131 signed one or more of a dozen PNAC letters to congress and a couple of presidents, and/or various PNAC policy statements. These are a Who's Who of right-wing power wielders, in and out of the administration:

Richard Armitage (Deputy Secretary of State);
John Bolton (Undersecretary of State);
Robert Zoellick (U.S. Trade Representative);
William Schneider, Jr. (Defense Science Board);
Richard Perle (formerly of the Defense Policy Board);
and William Kristol (PNAC co-founder), Norman Podhoretz, William Bennett, Joshua Muravchik, Max Boot, James Woolsey, and many, many more.

This is hardly the harmless few ('Five,' they said?) that neocons would have us believe it is. Besides their high positions in the White House, Defense and State, they've made the major appointments at Justice (Ashcroft), the EPA (Leavitt) and numerous other agencies controlling virtually every aspect of our lives.

Article Author: Hal Pawluk

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