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The Neo-Cons: A Series Of "Unfortunate" Events

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Message Glen Clancy

The neo-conservative think tank, Project for the New American Century (PNAC), funded by three foundations closely tied to Persian Gulf oil and weapons and defense industries, produced a document in September 2000 entitled "Rebuilding America's Defenses: Strategies, Forces and Resources for a New Century."  The plan reveals that current members of Bush's cabinet had planned for Gulf regional domination prior to Bush taking office.  The 90-page PNAC document signed by Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, Jeb Bush, Lewis Libby and Paul Wolfowitz states: 

"The United States has for decades sought to play a more permanent role in Gulf regional security.  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." 
A "core mission" for the transformed U.S. military is to "fight and decisively win multiple, simultaneous major theater wars," according to the PNAC document.  "The process of transformation," the plan said, "is likely to be a long one, absent some catastrophic and catalyzing event-like a new Pearl Harbor."

On September 10th 2001, the day before 9/11, senior Bush officials finalised a report planning military action against Afghanistan.  Shortly after the US-led invasion of Afghanistan, the US military approved the evacuation of hundreds of Taliban and al-Qaeda combatants airlifted from the Taliban-held city of Kunduz to Pakistan, according to US intelligence officials.

Two weeks ago, the US military remained idle as a prison-break was facilitated by the detonation of what is estimated to have been up to 800 kilograms of explosives.

Experts in regional affairs believe that the escape of four-hundred Taliban soldiers was given the green-light from US forces.  "There are two opinions among Afghans following up the attack", said Ahmad Saadat, a political expert. "Non-political individuals say the Taliban managed to attack the prison with the help of God, while those more political believe that US forces helped them."  Saadat concluded that the Afghans are tired of war and that only a few illiterate fighters continue to attack foreign forces.

This week, NATO officials declared that six-thousand troops are urgently needed in Afghanistan.  German NATO general, Egon Ramms claims "We need these soldiers now, very soon, because we need to hold specific areas."

In 2006, the United Nations human rights chief in Iraq, John Pace revealed that a campaign of torture and murder is being conducted by U.S.-trained government police forces.  Mr. Pace said that "the bulk are attributed to the agents of the Ministry of the Interior."  Figures from Baghdad Medico-Legal Institute, which is located next to the city's mortuary, showed that in one month the morgue received 1,100 bodies, about 900 of which had been tortured or summarily executed.

Steve Casteel was appointed senior US advisor of the Interior Ministry in the fall of 2003.  Casteel is a former top official in the Drug Enforcement Administration who spent much of his professional life immersed in the drug wars of Latin America.  In February 2005, General Adnan Thabit, a former member of Hussein's military intelligence service who was imprisoned in 1996 after he joined a U.S.-backed coup plot, was assigned leader of Iraq's Special Police Commandos controlled by the Interior Ministry.

"In a country of tough guys, Adnan Thabit may be the toughest of all," writes Peter Maass of the New York Times.  "He was both a general and a death-row prisoner under Saddam Hussein."  The Special Police Commandos principle US advisor is James Steele, who led a Special Forces mission in El Salvador during the 1980's.  Steele headed a team of 55 Special Forces advisors accused of involvement in death squads and human rights abuses.

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