martingale
10th November 2003, 06:33
Each year, Project Censored comes out with the 10 most censored or underreported stories in the U.S. from the previous year:
http://www.sfbg.com/37/50/cover_censored.html
For 2002, the "neocons' plans for global domination top the annual list of stories ignored or downplayed by the U.S. mainstream media."
Quote:
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IF THERE'S ONE influence that has shaped worldwide political events over the past year, it's the extent to which the Bush administration has exploited the events of Sept. 11, 2001, to solidify its military and economic control of the world at the expense of democracy, true justice, and the environment. But George W. Bush hasn't simply been responding to world events. The agenda his administration has followed fits perfectly with a clearly defined plan that's been in place for more than a decade.
The neoconservative blueprint for United States military domination is hardly a secret. A group called the Project for a New American Century – a think tank founded by hawks who are now in prominent jobs in the White House – released a version of it three years ago. The document is shocking in its candor: it asserts that the United States should be moving unilaterally to assert military control around the globe, and that all that's necessary to jump-start the effort is a "new Pearl Harbor."
Yet none of the major news media in this country have reported on this document or on the fact that Bush is so closely following its script.
That's the biggest "censored" story in the nation last year, according to Sonoma State University's Project Censored, a 27-year-old program dedicated to shining some light on the shortcomings of the major news media.
.....
1. The neoconservative plan for global dominance
"Terror: A question of when, not if" read the front-page headline of the Sept. 7, 2002, San Francisco Chronicle. Americans, it argued, will just have to get used to the fact that we're now engaged in a "perpetual war."
Later that day Bush went on TV to ask the nation for another $87 billion for the fight against terrorism. But the concept of "perpetual war," and the military strategy that comes with it – of unilateralism, preemptive strikes, and a "forward presence" in key regions throughout the globe – is nothing new. The Sept. 11 attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon simply provided the perfect rationale to implement existing plans.
Back in the early 1990s, hawks in Bush Sr.'s administration – notably, then-Secretary of Defense Dick Cheney, with the help of General Colin Powell and Paul Wolfowitz (at the time, Joint Chiefs of Staff chair and Undersecretary of Defense for Policy, respectively) – drew up a plan that was virtually identical to the National Security Strategy unveiled in September 2002.
Their blueprint – first spelled out in a classified internal policy statement in 1992 titled "Defense Planning Guidance" (later repeated in Cheney's "Defense Strategy for the 1990s," formally released in January of 1993) – called for the United States to assert its military superiority to prevent the emergence of a new superpower rival.
It called for the United States to diversify its military presence throughout the world, offered a policy of preemption, argued nuclear program while discouraging those of other countries, and foresaw the need for the United States to act alone, if need be, to protect its interests and those of its allies. Sound familiar?
Yet the neocons knew they faced a hard sell as Bill Clinton took office. "Rebuilding America's Defenses: Strategy, Forces, and Resources," a report released by the Project for the New American Century in 2000, stated that the United States needed a catastrophe – "a new Pearl Harbor," as the authors called it – to jump-start the neocons' blueprint for all-encompassing military and economic world dominance. (PNAC was founded by none other than Cheney, Wolfowitz, Richard Perle, Donald Rumsfeld, and other former Reagan and Bush administration hawks.)
Then came the attacks of Sept. 11 – just nine months after the Bush administration took office. The events of that day provided the perfect excuse for Cheney and company to finally see their plans to fruition.
Top on their list of targets was Saddam Hussein's Iraq. Within 24 hours of the planes hitting the World Trade Center and Pentagon – and without so much as an inkling of evidence as to who had carried out the attacks – Attorney General John Ashcroft was already calling for war on Iraq, according to a report by Bob Woodward in the Washington Post.
Indeed, the neocons have had the Persian Gulf in their crosshairs for 30 years now. Ever since the oil crisis of 1976 and the Gulf states' nationalization of their petroleum industries in the years that preceded it, the United States began building up forces in the region – primarily in Saudi Arabia – and strengthening relationships with regional dictatorships. The reasons seem simple: the region holds two-thirds of the world's oil.
"Control over the Persian Gulf translates into control over Europe, Japan, and China," Hampshire College professor and Resource Wars author Michael Klare told Mother Jones. "It's having our hand on the spigot."
----------------------------------------------------------------------
http://www.sfbg.com/37/50/cover_censored.html
For 2002, the "neocons' plans for global domination top the annual list of stories ignored or downplayed by the U.S. mainstream media."
Quote:
-----------------------------------------------------------------
IF THERE'S ONE influence that has shaped worldwide political events over the past year, it's the extent to which the Bush administration has exploited the events of Sept. 11, 2001, to solidify its military and economic control of the world at the expense of democracy, true justice, and the environment. But George W. Bush hasn't simply been responding to world events. The agenda his administration has followed fits perfectly with a clearly defined plan that's been in place for more than a decade.
The neoconservative blueprint for United States military domination is hardly a secret. A group called the Project for a New American Century – a think tank founded by hawks who are now in prominent jobs in the White House – released a version of it three years ago. The document is shocking in its candor: it asserts that the United States should be moving unilaterally to assert military control around the globe, and that all that's necessary to jump-start the effort is a "new Pearl Harbor."
Yet none of the major news media in this country have reported on this document or on the fact that Bush is so closely following its script.
That's the biggest "censored" story in the nation last year, according to Sonoma State University's Project Censored, a 27-year-old program dedicated to shining some light on the shortcomings of the major news media.
.....
1. The neoconservative plan for global dominance
"Terror: A question of when, not if" read the front-page headline of the Sept. 7, 2002, San Francisco Chronicle. Americans, it argued, will just have to get used to the fact that we're now engaged in a "perpetual war."
Later that day Bush went on TV to ask the nation for another $87 billion for the fight against terrorism. But the concept of "perpetual war," and the military strategy that comes with it – of unilateralism, preemptive strikes, and a "forward presence" in key regions throughout the globe – is nothing new. The Sept. 11 attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon simply provided the perfect rationale to implement existing plans.
Back in the early 1990s, hawks in Bush Sr.'s administration – notably, then-Secretary of Defense Dick Cheney, with the help of General Colin Powell and Paul Wolfowitz (at the time, Joint Chiefs of Staff chair and Undersecretary of Defense for Policy, respectively) – drew up a plan that was virtually identical to the National Security Strategy unveiled in September 2002.
Their blueprint – first spelled out in a classified internal policy statement in 1992 titled "Defense Planning Guidance" (later repeated in Cheney's "Defense Strategy for the 1990s," formally released in January of 1993) – called for the United States to assert its military superiority to prevent the emergence of a new superpower rival.
It called for the United States to diversify its military presence throughout the world, offered a policy of preemption, argued nuclear program while discouraging those of other countries, and foresaw the need for the United States to act alone, if need be, to protect its interests and those of its allies. Sound familiar?
Yet the neocons knew they faced a hard sell as Bill Clinton took office. "Rebuilding America's Defenses: Strategy, Forces, and Resources," a report released by the Project for the New American Century in 2000, stated that the United States needed a catastrophe – "a new Pearl Harbor," as the authors called it – to jump-start the neocons' blueprint for all-encompassing military and economic world dominance. (PNAC was founded by none other than Cheney, Wolfowitz, Richard Perle, Donald Rumsfeld, and other former Reagan and Bush administration hawks.)
Then came the attacks of Sept. 11 – just nine months after the Bush administration took office. The events of that day provided the perfect excuse for Cheney and company to finally see their plans to fruition.
Top on their list of targets was Saddam Hussein's Iraq. Within 24 hours of the planes hitting the World Trade Center and Pentagon – and without so much as an inkling of evidence as to who had carried out the attacks – Attorney General John Ashcroft was already calling for war on Iraq, according to a report by Bob Woodward in the Washington Post.
Indeed, the neocons have had the Persian Gulf in their crosshairs for 30 years now. Ever since the oil crisis of 1976 and the Gulf states' nationalization of their petroleum industries in the years that preceded it, the United States began building up forces in the region – primarily in Saudi Arabia – and strengthening relationships with regional dictatorships. The reasons seem simple: the region holds two-thirds of the world's oil.
"Control over the Persian Gulf translates into control over Europe, Japan, and China," Hampshire College professor and Resource Wars author Michael Klare told Mother Jones. "It's having our hand on the spigot."
----------------------------------------------------------------------