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Comment by Findecanor | Hacker News Reader

He had been one of the signatories of the "think-tank" Project for the New American Century's [1] founding statement of principles, alongside 24 others, including Donald Rumsfeld and Paul Wolfowitz.

During the Clinton administration, the PNAC had lobbied for invasion of Iraq and Afghanistan — and then Iran from two sides, to install puppet regimes and secure the oil supply.

When GWB took over, Cheney became vice president and the administration got filled with many other PNAC members.

... and the rest is history.

The PNAC's membership lists and manifestos were at the time publicly available on their web site, now on archive.org [2].

It repeatedly surprises me that so few people didn't and still don't know about the PNAC.

1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_for_the_New_American_C...

2. https://web.archive.org/web/20070208013451/https://www.newam...

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What's amazing is that these folks can straight-up publish what they plan to do, and then people still act surprised when they do it. It's so weird.

See also: Project 2025. Or various propaganda strategies that are proposed publicly, in specific detail, then used verbatim. They don't even have to hide it, and still get away with it. It's totally bizarre.

> What's amazing is that these folks can straight-up publish what they plan to do, and then people still act surprised when they do it. It's so weird.

It makes a little more sense if you figure that there's a sizable contingent of folks are actually supportive of these plans, but perhaps want to save face by downplaying them in the moment or acting surprised.

It's not because of lack of education, lack of engagement, or genuine surprise, it's motivated reasoning from a value system that is fundamentally different than yours or mine.

This group is basically just the Israel lobby, which thankfully many more Americans are becoming familiar with due to recent events. They were immensely powerful back then (Buchanan was sidelined for going against them), and they still are today.

I think the more interesting question is why isn’t it colloquial knowledge the Rumsfeld et al were basically in bed with a foreign country? It’s especially important today given how our current presidents are still unable to control Israel. Both Biden and Trump want a ceasefire, deescalation etc yet Netanyahu (who played a large part in the clean break report linked to in your Wikipedia link) constantly rebukes them. Either they’re ok with it in private or they don’t have power…both of which should be very concerning.

Israel and America allied for straightforward reasons during the Cold War. The theory that Israel 'controls' America is as stupid as it is popular.

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