9/11 Paul Wolfowitz Interview PBS News Hour With Jim Lehrer September 14, 2001

Ex-World Bank President Paul Wolfowitz delivered a June 2001 West Point commencement speech wherein he focused on surprise attacks-- making heavy reference to Pearl Harbor. Wolfowitz illustrated, just months before the infamous 9/11 attacks, that Pearl Harbor is interesting in that it was "preceded by an astonishing number of unheeded warnings and missed signals." The pre-meditation established by the Project for a New American Century (PNAC). Wolfowitz helped to pen the think tank's September 2000 document 'Rebuilding America's Defenses' which stated on pg. 51, amidst a larger call for dramatic military build-up, that:

"The process of transformation, even if it brings revolutionary change, is likely to be a long one, absent some catastrophic and catalyzing event -- like a new Pearl Harbor."

Wolfowitz Doctrine is an unofficial name given to the initial version of the Defense Planning Guidance for the 1994--99 fiscal years (dated February 18, 1992) authored by U.S. Undersecretary of Defense for Policy Paul Wolfowitz and his deputy Scooter Libby. Not intended for public release, it was leaked to The New York Times on March 7, 1992, and sparked a public controversy about U.S. foreign and defense policy. The document was widely criticized as imperialist as the document outlined a policy of unilateralism and pre-emptive military action to suppress potential threats from other nations and prevent any other nation from rising to superpower status. Such was the outcry that the document was hastily re-written under the close supervision of U.S. Secretary of Defense Dick Cheney and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Colin Powell before being officially released on April 16, 1992. Although the initial release was denounced at the time it was leaked, many of its tenets have since re-emerged in the Bush Doctrine. Who are the neoconservatives? The first generation were ex-liberals, socialists, and Trotskyites, boat-people from the McGovern revolution who rafted over to the GOP at the end of conservatism's long march to power with Ronald Reagan in 1980. A neoconservative, wrote Kevin Phillips back then, is more likely to be a magazine editor than a bricklayer. Today, he or she is more likely to be a resident scholar at a public policy institute such as the American Enterprise Institute (AEI) or one of its clones like the Center for Security Policy or the Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs (JINSA). As one wag writes, a neocon is more familiar with the inside of a think tank than an Abrams tank. Almost none came out of the business world or military, and few if any came out of the Goldwater campaign. The heroes they invoke are Woodrow Wilson, FDR, Harry Truman. All are interventionists who regard Stakhanovite support of Israel as a defining characteristic of their breed. Among their luminaries are Jeane Kirkpatrick, Bill Bennett, Michael Novak, and James Q. Wilson. Their publications include the Weekly Standard, Commentary, the New Republic, National Review, and the editorial page of the Wall Street Journal. Though few in number, they wield disproportionate power through control of the conservative foundations and magazines, through their syndicated columns, and by attaching themselves to corrupt men of power. On Sept. 12, Americans were still in shock when Bill Bennett told CNN that we were in "a struggle between good and evil," that the Congress must declare war on "militant Islam," and that "overwhelming force" must be used. Bennett cited Lebanon, Libya, Syria, Iraq, Iran, and China as targets for attack. Not, however, Afghanistan, the sanctuary of Osama's terrorists. How did Bennett know which nations must be smashed before he had any idea who attacked us? The Wall Street Journal immediately offered up a specific target list, calling for U.S. air strikes on "terrorist camps in Syria, Sudan, Libya, and Algeria, and perhaps even in parts of Egypt." Yet, not one of Bennett's six countries, nor one of these five, had anything to do with 9/11. On Sept. 15, according to Bob Woodward's Bush at War, "Paul Wolfowitz put forth military arguments to justify a U.S. attack on Iraq rather than Afghanistan." Why Iraq? Because, Wolfowitz argued in the War Cabinet, while "attacking Afghanistan would be uncertain ... Iraq was a brittle oppressive regime that might break easily. It was doable." On Sept. 20, forty neoconservatives sent an open letter to the White House instructing President Bush on how the war on terror must be conducted. Signed by Bennett, Podhoretz, Kirkpatrick, Perle, Kristol, and Washington Post columnist Charles Krauthammer, the letter was an ultimatum. To retain the signers' support, the president was told, he must target Hezbollah for destruction, retaliate against Syria and Iran if they refuse to sever ties to Hezbollah, and overthrow Saddam. Any failure to attack Iraq, the signers warned Bush, "will constitute an early and perhaps decisive surrender in the war on international terrorism."

• Category

  News & Politics

[Neils Dahlberg]

Love that deer in the headlights look about him. This sneaky fuck should have a fair military trial and surely HUNG.

[911InvestigationVids]

Allow? They did not allow anything, they did it. Period.

[bananajoe090]

In 2002, I went to Iraq. Before America showed up, it was a happy place. They had flowery meadows and rainbow skies and, and rivers made of chocolate where the children danced and laughed and played with gumdrop smiles.

[Gordon Liddy]

Has anyone asked him about the PNAC manifest & it's timing in relation to 9/11? Will he dismiss it as "conspiracy theory"?

Is it yet another coincidence that their goals were achieved through that "new pearl harbor"?

[proconsulaugustus]

Amen to that.

[proconsulaugustus]

I meant beady eyed.

[proconsulaugustus]

This guy is a lying, bead-eyed, warmongering Zionist fuck and I hope he gets what is coming to him.

[barocco78]

This bloodthirsty AIPAC talking head should be tried in Hague.

[CountessofStrathearn]

AMEN..