In a NY Times article from which the following passage is excerpted, the 1992 Paul Wolfowitz document that was a precursor to PNAC was likened to Cold War document NSC-68, produced by Paul Nitze 42 years earlier:

More than a decade ago, as undersecretary of defense for policy in the first Bush administration, Mr. Wolfowitz was charged by Dick Cheney, then defense secretary, with drafting a new "Defense Planning Guidance," a broad directive that was intended to govern policy in a second Bush term. An early draft proposed that with the demise of the Soviet Union, American doctrine should be to assure that no new superpower arose to rival the United States' enlightened domination of the world.

... The attacks of Sept. 11 also played an important role in reviving such concepts. PNAC signatory Mr. [Robert] Kagan likened it to the way North Korea's invasion of South Korea suddenly spurred a big increase in the Truman administration's defense budget and in its willingness to confront the Soviet Union more aggressively, an approach that had been urged by Dean Acheson and Paul Nitze but resisted on budgetary and other grounds until war began. [3]

The purpose of this, according to Wolfe, was to 'convey a sense of crisis that would justify a program of militarization even though the United States had 'far more military power than anything the Soviets could assemble for some time to come.' Just replace the word 'Soviets' with the word 'Iraqis' and one has a description of the deception on which the invasion of Iraq was built.

Make the same simple substitution in the following sentence and you have the argument that was recently used to raise suspicion that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction:

How does one know the Soviet Union 'seeks to impose its absolute authority' over the entire world? Because of repressive measures carried out within its own borders. As NSC-68 put it, 'The Kremlin's design of world domination begins at home.' (page 33)

This train of thought raises further questions, as Sanders points out:

First, was the Soviet Threat totally contrived, or was it exaggerated in either degree or kind? Second, whether exaggerated or contrived, why was it brought into being by the architects of NSC-68? My answer to the first is that it was both. While the military threat was indeed contrived, a real Soviet threat - of a political nature - did exist. It was exaggerated. The reason for this hyperbole was fear that Western European nations would adopt an independent neutralist course which would greatly diminish American imperial power, both economic and political, first in that vital region and then in other parts of the world. (page 34)

One year before NSC-68, and six months prior to the Russian atom bomb test that served as the ostensible pretext for its writing, an American military mission with State Department representation in the person of Paul Nitze concluded that the threat of military force to be credible would require an expenditure of $30 billion to $40 billion a year.

The question became, How does one sell such a thing to the public?

The record of the meetings of the State-Defense Policy Review Committee during the process of drafting NSC-68 is testimony to the degree of concern over how to transform a secret plan into an accepted policy. Leon Keyserling, chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers, and long-time foreign policy adviser and international banker Robert Lovett, both argued before the Committee that the constraints acting against a $50 billion military budget were not economic but political in nature.

What they felt that they needed was a private citizen's lobby, outside of the administration - a group of 'worthy citizens' who, after studying the proposals in NSC-68, could promote them to the public. "Such a group could then translate NSC-68 into public discourse under the guise of extraordinary bipartisan concern transcending ordinary politics to meet the national crisis'. (46) "We must have a much vaster propaganda machine to tell our story at home and abroad," said Robert Lovett. (51)

Defense Secretary Louis Johnson (who was in favor of holding the line on military expenditures) was forced out, and George Marshall named to replace him. "The appointment of Establishment stalwart Robert Lovett as Deputy Secretary of Defense signalled the completion of the Acheson-Nitze takeover of the Truman foreign policy." (53)

Wolfowitz's docrtine of unilateral perventive war:

Kristol and Kagan defined their "neo-Reaganite foreign policy" as "benevolent global hegemony," based on a massive buildup of American military might. The authors were reviving the 1991 Wolfowitz doctrine of unilateral preventive war, explicitly stating, "The appropriate goal of American foreign policy is to preserve that hegemony as far into the future as possible."[4]

During the Kennedy Administration the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Lyman L. Lemnitzer developed Operation Northwoods, a "U.S. plan to wage terrorist attacks against American citizens and blame Fidel Castro as a pretext for war".

Some suggest that 9/11 was another Operation Northwoods: [5] In Feb, 2001, it was reported that Michael Sedlak, an employee of the Vinnell Corporation, a subsidiary of Halliburton and an extension of US military and intelligence operations in Saudi Arabia - had been arrested and suspected of ordering bombings in the Saudi capital. What was that all about? See: Saudis.

Under George W. Bush, the Department of Defense conducted another planning review in 2001, completing and releasing its Quadrennial Defense Review shortly after the attacks of September 11. The 2001 QDR focused on the need for forward deterrence, so that the United States could maintain its security through active engagement, and responding to asymmetric threats such as terrorist attacks. Overall, the QDR marked a shift in focus from responding to specific threats to building up the capabilities for meeting all possible force requirements, both functional and geographic. As stated in the QDR:

"The new defense strategy is built around the concept of shifting to a 'capabilities-based' approach to defense. That concept reflects the fact that the United States cannot know with confidence what nation, combination of nations, or non-state actor will pose threats to vital U.S. interests or those of U.S. allies and friends decades from now. It is possible, however, to anticipate the capabilities that an adversary might employ to coerce its neighbors, deter the United States from acting in defense of its allies and friends, or directly attack the United States or its deployed forces. A capabilities-based model- one that focuses more on how an adversary might fight than who the adversary might be and where a war might occur - broadens the strategic perspective." [6]

We, as a nation, are exceedingly vulnerable to asymmetric assaults, which have the capacity to affect all major areas of our lives. These currently include the well-known biological, chemical, information (telecommunication and cyber) and economic spheres of asymmetric warfare. With the recent completion of the Human Genome Project, which identified and mapped all genes in human DNA, it is now theoretically possibly to create biological warfare tailored to the genetic traits of a targeted ethnic group. However, this specific threat is years away. Electromagnetic pulse (affecting electronic devices) and laser (causing eye damage and blindness) technologies are of immediate concern, given that these are presently being perfected by our enemies. [7] [Asymmetric threat and 'national borders': Reagan Administration/asymmetric]

Date: 10/30/2003

... in a move that, in the context of other recent developments, is likely to fuel speculation that the White House might be trying to soften the harder edges of its controversial policies.

... Assistant Secretary of Defence for International Security Policy, J.D. Crouch II, was resigning effective Friday...

While officials stressed that Crouch, who has a long association with many of the key figures who have promoted military pre- eminence as U.S. post-Cold War strategy, was leaving voluntarily, some sources said his resignation reflected a loss of influence on the part of right-wing and neo-conservative hawks centred in the Pentagon and Vice President Dick Cheney's office.

... Crouch is a long-time protege of William van Cleave [see Reagan Administration for info on his relationship with PNAC signatories Richard Allen, Richard Perles, and Fred Ikle], a nuclear-arms specialist who played a key role in the mid-1970s in derailing detente with the Soviet Union, in part by working with PNAC signatory Rumsfeld and neo-conservative hawks in thwarting Secretary of State Henry Kissinger's efforts to reach a major strategic-arms agreement with the Soviet Union.[8]

In 2002, Lowell Ponte suggests that as an alternative to the term 'preemptive strike' Bush should use 'assertive disarmament', the 'splendid euphemistic phrase coined by my mentor in the think tank community, Dr. William Van Cleave.[10]