Surely Not Poor Little Ol’ PNAC
George Packer (via Brad DeLong):
A commenter I assume to be Gary Schmitt, the former executive director and current senior fellow at the Project for the New American Century, writes to take me to task for my characterization of the organization, saying that PNAC contributed no staff or board members to the Bush Administration. Schmitt is right…
But only in the most technical sense: right in fact, wrong in spirit. Schmitt’s weasel maneuver is of course typical of the sociopaths of PNAC who’d very much like it if everyone forgets just what their horrible little group is responsible for. So they deny, deny, deny — and for good measure imply that they are victims or scapegoats. Poor, poor pitiful PNACers, persecuted by liberals who subscribe to a fantastic (and no doubt anti-Semitic) conspiracy theory which holds that a clique of moral monsters, who had been pushing for years for violently expanding the American Empire, took advantage of 9/11 to effect exactly that end, through their influence in government and the media. So crazy it’s true!
PNACers and their admirers insist that it was nothing more than a harmless little group of scholars. Just ask Bill Kristol:
Colbert: Speaking of thinking alike, you were a member, or are a member of the New Project for the American Century, correct?
Kristol: I am.
Colbert: Were or am, am?
Kristol: Were and am.
Colbert: How’s that project coming?
Kristol: well. it’s..(stammering)
Colbert: How’s the New American Century, looks good to me?
Kristol: Ahh–I think…hehe yea–I’m speechless..
Colbert: Really?
Kristol: Yea…we’ve sort of…the Project for the New American Century is just a few people..
And here’s David Frum:
PNAC is the acronym for the “Project for the New American Century”–a three person think tank in Washington DC that fills a large place in the imaginations of America’s left-wing.
Frum isn’t always so nice when the subject comes up. Meanwhile, David Brooks insists these people “don’t actually have much contact with one another.” Right. And for good measure, here’s Sean Hannity, Jonathan Adler, and Rod Dreher with their own version of the same bullschmitt.
Man, you folks have been busy this morning. Keep up the good work.
The part that gets me is all the airtime these asshats continue to enjoy. Goddamn Frum, may he rot in Hell, preferably starting next Tuesday, seems to be on NPR every other day. One would think being accessories to mass murder would lower their appeal, yet Kristol and Frum continue to get media exposure.
Fuck you Fred Hiatt, and fuck you NPR.
PNAC-Conspiracy to commit War Crimes.
Run Billy RUN!!
They better claim they don’t exist or they’ll all be up for war crimes in a Spanish Court. Doug Feith is already desperately whining that he barely knew anyone in the Bush administration.
As someone once said, the greatest trick the Devil ever pulled was convincing the world he didn’t exist.
As someone once said, the greatest trick the Devil ever pulled was convincing the world he didn’t exist.
Keyser Söze is in PNAC? Damn.
PNAC contributed no staff or board members to the Bush Administration
I’ve heard of PNAC — it’s just a group of four or five friends who occasionally got together for lunch, racquetball, and invading Iraq. But what is this “Bush administration” you speak of?
Remember, PNAC went away and then came back around election time.
I think PNAC is only operational when Democrats are in the White House.
It’s funny that the Neocons deny the existence or influence of PNAC but Michelle Bachmann can hear voices in her head telling the wingnuts to start a revolution against the tyrannical Obama and THAT is supposed to make sense? Okie dokie ….
PNAC? Wasn’t that on my sammich?
Oh, wait. PNAC.
Funny, I vaguely recall some of these d00ds being part of the Bush Administration (only peripherally, of course).
Other examples of ‘conspiracy theories”; The Sanhedrin, The Inquisition, The Nuremberg Trials and the Justice League of America.
Ah yes, the Officer Barbrady defense: “Forget. Foooorget!”
But what is this “Bush administration” you speak of?
89-93. 41’s homies, as I believe Michael Steele refers to them. Lunch, racketball, invading Iraq and puking on ambassadors. And potatoes.
And John Bolton wasn’t part of the Bush administration, he just hung around a lot and tried to hit on Pickles.
In other news, the protests outside the Bank of England today have gone off peacefully thus far. It is unknown whether this is down to the (1) ‘Who Is John Galt’ placard pacifying the masses.
Kristol has always been insufferable, and so was his old man. New money in the worst sense of the term. Really most of the soi disant Conservative media elite (with exceptions like George Will) is in dire need of a good purge. Our time in Opposition will be an opportunity to re-invent and re-organize ourselves. Let’s hope we don’t go the route the Democrats went–sacrificing ideological coherence and intellectual integrity in favor of vicious, vapid machines like Reid and Emmanuel whose only commitment is to wielding power for its own sake.
PNAC just has a new name.
Looks like Schmitt’s trying to Weigel out of it.
Let’s also hope that people have enough brains to realize this happened a long, long time ago to the repig party. Having no guiding instinct other than “sheer power grab” is inherent among conservatives, whose real motto is “Give us rich people all the money as well as any crumbs that fall to the floor”. Because of this core unchangeable fact, they have no principles to actually govern with that would appeal to anybody other than the top 1% of income
grabbersearners, or the stupid tools and fools who are idiotic enough to actually believe them.“I’ve heard of PNAC — it’s just a group of four or five friends who occasionally got together for lunch, racquetball, and invading Iraq. But what is this “Bush administration” you speak of?” – Michael Berube
Oh, THAT Bush Administration. I just made up a bunch of stuff I thought the FBI guys wanted to hear. Michael Corleone did this, and Michale Corleone did that. It turns out, I’ve never met the guy.
Y’know, this is like saying the Crusades weren’t about the Bible.
I really wish PNAC would just say “Look, we made a lucky guess and someone read our thesis, and oops! We were wrong!”
But that would mean taking responsibility for the greater good of the nation, something that seems to be a trait of Democrats and Democrats only in this country.
Oh, THAT Bush Administration. I just made up a bunch of stuff I thought the FBI guys wanted to hear. Michael Corleone did this, and Michale Corleone did that. It turns out, I’ve never met the guy.
WIN!
ooooooo, so THAT’S what it means!
i always thought it meant pizza. nachos and cheetos. figured it was a wingnut rallying theme, in that they embody everything in America™ worth saving.
and also, cheez wiz and job creation and fursuits. also.
BAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA
Let’s hope we don’t go the route the Democrats went–sacrificing ideological coherence and intellectual integrity in favor of vicious, vapid machines like Reid and Emmanuel whose only commitment is to wielding power for its own sake.
Whitey, when a party, the GOP, makes a word, “liberal”, an epithet, then ideology tends to fall by the wayside over time.
It’s far easier for an individual to coalesce power and operate out of opposition to any policy he can successfully paint as flawed and failing. Clinton did it, co-opting middle-right (and some middle-left) planks in his platform while pointing out the huge flaws in Reagan/Bush policies.
Gingrich did this, as well, with his Contract On America, which was a cynical power grab that, on its face, was an effective strategy for a party that promotes commerce over humanity, but was never intended to be anything but a tool to gain power.
Make no mistake, I am in admiration of the effective if mean-spirited assault the Republican party made upon me and my fellow libs, from Atwater to Gingrich to DeLay.
Payback’s a bitch, however. As I have posted on my blog: “So when you try to hurl that label at my feet, ‘Liberal,’ as if it were something to be ashamed of, something dirty, something to run away from, it won’t work, Senator, because I will pick up that label and I will wear it as a badge of honor.”
I should add that, by the end of the second Obama administration, we will have seen the shape and form of the new Republican party. I don’t think they will win even the 2016 election, but they stand a chance in 2020 if they are successful in their morphing.
Kristol has always been insufferable, and so was his old man. New money in the worst sense of the term. Really most of the soi disant Conservative media elite (with exceptions like George Will) is in dire need of a good purge. Our time in Opposition will be an opportunity to re-invent and re-organize ourselves.
Hip-Hop settings?
PNAC- it’s like your list of friends in Facebook
Gary Shitt can lick the pus from Bill Kristol’s diseased sphincter.
Since PNAC’s board and staff was just yer classic wingnut-welfare operation, it’s the cocking signatures at the bottom of their Invade! Invade! Invade! manifestos that matter.
Those PNAC’ers exhibit such a talent for farsighted planning.
from “Rebuilding America’s Defenses: Strategy, Forces and Resources for a New Century, September 2000”
G.W. Bush and the Repubs: “Fixed that for ya.”
And what did they think the focus of American strategy should be in 2000?
Oh, yes, I totally want to know what those bozos think our strategy should be starting in 2010. So we can do the exact opposite.
You know what my favorite thing about PNAC is? It’s one of a bunch of alphabet soup groups clustering around a bewilderingly influential number of insanely stupid policy advisers shared by the US and Israeli super-hawk movements.
So you have Perle first fucking up Israel beyond all repair (seriously, the willingness of Likud to basically take his word for it that this Chalabi guy was the key to defeating the Iraqi menace and keeping Iran in check is just fucking astonishing; so much was staked so gullibly by so many on so little, and oh so predictably), and then he and his buddies got into control here and pulled the same thing.
In general, ‘PNAC’ and ‘neoconservatives’ and all those other words refer to the cloud of a unique melange of ink and shit surrounding Leo Strauss; they’re just spoiled rich kids who think they’re the geniuses capable of saving America from the ravaging hordes. They like to play up the Jew angle both of themselves (not significant compared to a cross-section of the American university at the time) and their founder, but if you take the word of someone who begged a friend not to give up on Hitler as a champion of European civilization just because of silly rumors of Jews being persecuted as gospel, who the fuck are you to lecture anyone about anything, let a-goddam-lone anti-Semitism?
Rebuilding America’s Defenses: Strategy, Forces and Resources for a New Century, September 2000
In case anyone can’t believe they were so pompous and dumb. But I bet you can.
Dammit, I always come late to a thread.
To wit, I wonder how Schmitt and Kristol and that whole cabal can spin that they never “contributed” to the Bush administration when signatories to its Statement of Principles included the likes of Scooter Libby, Donald Rumsfeld, Norm Podhoretz, Paul Wolfowitz, and…oh yeah…some guy who was kind of important in the whole Bush “Administration,” one Richard Bruce Cheney.
But okay, PNAC contributed no staff or board members. Kinda like how we contributed no POWs in Gitmo. They just ended up there somehow, and insisted on being referred to as “Enemy Combatants.”
Clowns.
Really just read Securing The Realm. It basically reads as ‘Why Israel Is A Fucked-Up Dead Thing All Of A Sudden 101′ – even if it weren’t for the profound ignorance of the most basic elements of Middle East politics and sociology, the intent is pure, dripping malevolence. Whatever Israel was doing wrong before the 90s, beginning with the influence of the neocons there every line used by foreign zionists in favor of its policy became an endless mantra emitted by Tel Aviv in response to any inquiry, and foreign policy went from sometimes amorally self-interested to sanctimoniously hostile to the very idea of morality.
And thanks to him, in the long run we now have the Israeli right plunging beyond even their American boosterists’ ability to tolerate (with Lieberman winning a swing bloc in the legislature by basically reenacting the Dreyfus Affair with the names changed and without any specific military impetus), and completely destroyed the credibility of the Israeli establishment even among fairly hardcore zionists elsewhere.
Of course, because the right basically has some kind of extraordinary power of passive-aggressive persuasion when it comes to the media in this country, the twelve percenters (the American Jews not among the 88% who voted for the President, who rather like the group sharing that name believe that Allah and the Soviets have been creating a black Superman to destroy America) are still going to be the ones who go on parade about every issue. And your Frums are still going to get to play sensible moderates in spite of being way beyond the fucking fringe in every way imaginable.
God almighty, this shit is depressing.
It’s sorta fun to watch these scum run for cover like cockroaches when you switch on the kitchen light. They would also like you to know that Bohemian Grove is just a bunch of harmless old guys who miss Boy Scout camp.
To be fair, sometimes it works the other way around. ‘The military-industrial complex’ makes it seem like a big deal, but it’s really just a bunch of guys who get together, slap each other around, beat off, and – spooning – reassure one another that they’re glorious alpha males, good husbands and providers with beautiful heads of hair, and then as stroking one another’s spear-bald heads goes horribly awry, the cycle continues. Just picture a version of Fight Club which is (a) somehow even more homoerotic and (b) populated exclusively by Rush Limbaugh and you’ve got the picture.
So basically like any Saturday night in Scottsdale. Total ripoff.
OT, but if anyone needs a chuckle, behold the Freepers losing their collective shit – wondering how how how is it possible that their boy could behind in NY-20:
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2219527/posts
PNAC just has a new name.
Didn’t they change it to “Xe”?
Oh, wait. Different war criminals.
From Legalize’s Freeperland link:
Well then.
I thought name changes were a good idea too. Of course, my organization has a smaller body count.
From Legalize’s Freeperland link:
Good grief. I read somewhere around the commie-blogs that part of modern conservatism’s failure to get new people on board is that buying into it requires a ton of training into a worldview – and supporting vocabulary – that it’s just too much work to get started.
Lovely example you found.
PNAC? PENIS!
how is it possible that their boy could behind in NY-20
Speaking of which, did ACORN get those absentee ballots printed up and stuffed in time?
I wish Conservative Insider would come back and tell us more about Tedisco’s mighty victory.
I like how the nature of my dismal work renders the odd attempt at parody insufficient around once a month.
I mean, this is from the jaundiced perspective of someone who came of political age during the post-Katrina meltdown – the single point at which the efforts by the hard right to superheat the culture under political pressure finally failed and once-loyal Republicans came boiling out in droves rather than having to deal with the violence praying that poor people in a disaster area got shot by the National Guard would do their conscience; I’m sure if the equivalent of the Freep-A-Tron existed in 1964, it’d be just as scummed over with horrifyingly ignorant shouting matches over whether America was a democracy or a republic and smug predictions that the election would suddenly turn in Goldwater’s favor at the eleventh hour.
But at some point, you just can’t expect anyone who lacks the time, energy, or volition to spend all day listening to self-appointed hucksters bloviate about random AP photos to follow you. And you can hardly expect the ones who do to select candidates who have any shot at winning votes from functioning human beings.
Either they find some way to autoclave the dittoheads or the Democratic free-for-all for Specter’s threatened seat is going to become the rule rather than the exception when centrist Republicans have to worry about pleasing the base. And because they’re wealthy, powerful assholes, they’ll just cast their bestest buddies overboard like spoiled meat.
And those buddies will still be screaming obliviously about radical Alabama coloreds keeping the New Deal alive the whole way down.
Tedisco was always doomed. He was obviously a double-plus-ungood conservative. An unrepublican.
Mention him or the traitor-Hindoo Jindal and they’ll gnaw your face off with rats.
Wow, I don’t know how I missed this:
Apparently the Cool Coach takes meds before he repeats this stuff here.
If Tedisco fails it’s because he was too moderate. A true conservative would have won that race handily. Also, ACORN, also. In any event, this is horrible news for Barry because gabba gabba hoozah.
The fact is that Ted Stevens is the victim of a political persecution. If it wasn’t for the persecution he faced, he would still be a Senator. Mark Begich won entirely due to the persecution of Stevens.
And it turns out Stevens was innocent of the charges he faced and the victim of prosecutor misconduct.
Obama has committed more crimes than Ted Stevens.
The fact is, Obots have perpetrated the crime of the century on us Appalachian Reagan Democrats. For shame.
Come to think of it, that must have been a troll. The genuine article would have found a way to work in populist anger about the President using a teleprompter.
Oh, and before the subject leaves PNAC completely, I’d just like to point out that the funniest thing about them is – they still care enough about getting nasty looks at cocktail parties that they swear up and down that they were as happy about civil rights doing whatever it is it was for and liberty and whatever as anyone, but then black America fell suddenly and without any other possible explanation into a mire of drugs, incarceration, illegitimacy, ACORN, lese-majeste, cussing, unions, and all kinds of terrible things completely unrelated to poverty, which is clearly genetic.
They were simple-minded fellow travellers of the Martin Luther King – Mister Rogers – Chairman Mao iron triangle, just like us. You know – because deep down, they’re still nice guys. They just got mugged by reality. Well, not so much mugged as ‘made to feel guilty about coloreds’, but you know, potAYto, potBLARto.
they still care enough about getting nasty looks at cocktail parties
The nasty looks are due to their fashion (non)sense. Everybody knows you don’t wear sleeves with a cocktail dress!.
PNAC = Post-Neocon Asshole Clique
One of our more famous-but-no-one-really-notices-him-anymore Yousta Bee wingnuts, Charles Johnson, follows this to a T. Johnson’s self-mythology would have you believe that 9/11, of course, Changed Everything(TM), but if you go back to his early blog entries, you’ll still see racist concern-trolling all over.
Why no comment on the newly-unveiled Afghanistani Civil Rights Act of Double-Aught Nine?
Heh, get it? “Unveiled?”
So what’s been happening over the past week, liberal, since I’ve been blacklisted from this “humor” site?
Obama goes on national TV and mocks the Special Olympics.
Democrats continue to pretend that they weren’t in charge of the Congress during the financial meltdown.
And the White House is going to administer our auto warranties.
Good stuff, liberals. Meanwhile, the search for virtually non-existent “white racism” continues, closely paced by the search for anything funny on this site.
That freeper thread reminds me of the Franken-Coleman threads in the Strib.
Ceaseless whining, accompanied by the bizzarro world facts.
It is to laugh.
The Scum Also Rises: isn’t it “funny” how the exact same pack of jackals always wind up together in these “think-tanks” & “policy boards” where they come up with strategies to Make America Great Again that wind up making it bankrupt & despised … & yet somehow never lose their media cachet? Kristol hasn’t gone a whole month without a paycheck since 2000 despite being known as Mr. Wrong – & his fellow commissars are in the same mink-lined boat.
Their greatest accomplishment has been to convince a lot of people that their obsolete paradigm is a worthy perspective that deserves respect, despite abundant smoldering rubble to the contrary. It’s simply taken for granted that these kudzu-in-suits-&-ties will still be the main ingredient on TeeVee panels in 2012 (or 2025 for that matter), screeching their political-flat-earth dogma for a paycheck while their more humane & smarter peers look for a job. Aristocracy: still alive & well in America.
You’d think after getting the same great press as the Gestapo, maybe PNAC would just lay low whenever their name comes up & wait for it to pass … but the same tactical genius that led Bush to launch an invasion of a country that had zilch to do with terrorism as part of his great War On Terror seems to prevail there.
OT: justice isn’t just blind – it’s also tone-deaf.
Our chief weapon is surprise…surprise and a fearce injection by “TRUE” ConserititusPenicillian…
… sorry, I’ll come in again.
Did I also mention that the Iraqi government is set to execute gay people for the heinous crime of being gay?
American imperialism is truely a wonder.
The fact is that Ted Stevens is the victim of a political persecution. If it wasn’t for the persecution he faced, he would still be a Senator. Mark Begich won entirely due to the persecution of Stevens.
OK. So? Want a do-over?
Incidentally, I’m pretty sure you can thank the DOJ appointees of the Bush Administration for the case against Ted Stevens. It would certainly explain why any case they had against Stevens was bungled so badly.
So what’s been happening over the past week, liberal, since I’ve been blacklisted from this “humor” site?
Shplorgle goes on doopy and blorps the blatznick.
Stoopityblops continue to pretend that they weren’t glibbity during the flippity-bloo-o-rama.
And the glombax is going to piffle-biffle our sloppity-boppities..
Good stuff, liberals. Meanwhile, the blart.
And it turns out Stevens was innocent of the charges he faced and the victim of prosecutor misconduct.
That Alberto Gonzalez really was a pig, wasn’t he?
Meanwhile, the search for virtually non-existent “white racism” continues
I bet you’re helping OJ look for the killer at the same time, too…
The genuine article would have found a way to work in populist anger about the President using a teleprompter.
I dunno – the genuine article probably took twenty minutes to hunt-n-peck out those two lines, so may have forgotten about that talking point entirely in its exhaustion.
Obama has committed more crimes than Ted Stevens.
For the last time Gary, Obama’s not criminally liable for your wet dreams.
PNAC = Project for the Next Authoritarian Clusterfuck
One of the cutest things about wingnuts is utter fascination with their Word-A-Day calendars. Its like they’re perpetually 5 years old, and once they learn a big neat new word, they have to slip it into every sentence that comes out of their mouths to impress Mommy.
Heh. Troofus isn’t even relevant enough anymore to disemvowel.
Too bad, so sad, pencildick.
No matter how many times I read this my brain still seizes up.
Exerpt:
In real life, Perle was the ideological architect of the Iraq war and of the Bush doctrine of preemptive attack. But at yesterday’s forum of foreign policy intellectuals, he created a fantastic world in which:
1. Perle is not a neoconservative.
2. Neoconservatives do not exist.
3. Even if neoconservatives did exist, they certainly couldn’t be blamed for the disasters of the past eight years.
“There is no such thing as a neoconservative foreign policy,” Perle informed the gathering, hosted by National Interest magazine. “It is a left critique of what is believed by the commentator to be a right-wing policy.”