George W. Bush's resume

I got this in an e-mail. I know some of the points are inappropriate, but some of the facts are pretty startling.

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George W. Bush Resume
The White House, USA



* PAST WORK EXPERIENCE:

I ran for congress and lost.


I produced a Hollywood slasher " B" movie.


I bought an oil company, but couldn't find any oil in Texas; company went
bankrupt shortly after I sold all my stock.

I bought the Texas Rangers baseball team in a sweetheart deal that took
land using taxpayer money. Biggest move: Traded Sammy Sosa to the Chicago
White Sox.

With my father's help (and his name) was elected Governor of Texas.


ACCOMPLISHMENTS:

I changed pollution laws for power and oil companies and made Texas the
most polluted state in the Union.

I replaced Los Angeles with Houston as the most smog-ridden city in
America. Cut taxes and bankrupted the Texas government to the tune of
billions in borrowed money. Set record for most executions by any Governor
in American history.
I became president after losing the popular vote by over 500,000 votes,
with the help of my father's appointments to the Supreme Court.


ACCOMPLISHMENTS AS PRESIDENT:
I attacked and took over two countries.
I spent the U.S. surplus and bankrupted the treasury.
I shattered record for biggest annual deficit in history.
I set an economic record for most private bankruptcies filed in any 12-
month period.
I set all-time record for biggest drop in the history of the stock market.
I am the first president in decades to execute a federal prisoner.
I am the first president in US history to enter office with a criminal
record.
I am the first year in office set the all-time record for most days on
vacation by any president in US history.
After taking the entire month of August off for vacation, I presided over
he worst security failure in US history.
I set the record for most campaign fundraising trips than any other
president in US history.
In my first two years in office over 2 million Americans lost their job.
I cut unemployment benefits for more out of work Americans than any
other president in US history.
I set the all-time record for most foreclosures in a 12-month period.
I appointed more convicted criminals to administration positions than any
president in US history.
I set the record for the least amount of press conferences given. More than
any
president since the advent of television.


I signed more laws and executive orders amending the Constitution than any
president in US history.
I presided over the biggest energy crises in US history and refused to
intervene when corruption was revealed.
I presided over the highest gasoline prices in US history and refused to
use the national reserves as past presidents have.
I cut healthcare benefits for war veterans.
I set the all-time record for most people worldwide to simultaneously take
to the streets to protest me (15 million people), shattering the record
for protest against any person in the history of mankind
( http://www.hyperreal.org/~dana/marches).
I dissolved more international treaties than any president in US history.
I've made my presidency the most secretive and unaccountable of any in US
history.
Members of my cabinet are the richest of any administration in US history.
(The 'poorest' multimillionaire, Condoleeza Rice, has a Chevron oil tanker
named after her).
I am the first president in US history to have all 50 states of the Union
simultaneously go bankrupt.
I presided over the biggest corporate stock market fraud of any market in
any country in the history of the world.
I am the first president in US history to order a US attack and military
occupation of a sovereign nation, and I did so against the will of the
United Nations and the world community.
I created the largest government department bureaucracy in the history of
the United States.
I set the all-time record for biggest annual budget spending increases,
more than any president in US history.
I am the first president in US history to have the United Nations remove
the US from the human rights commission.
I am the first president in US history to have the United Nations remove
the US from the elections monitoring board.
I removed more checks and balances, and have the least amount of
congressional oversight than any presidential administration in US
history.
I rendered the entire United Nations irrelevant.
I withdrew from the World Court of Law.
I refused to allow inspectors access to US prisoners of war and by default
no longer abide by the Geneva Conventions.
I am the first president in US history to refuse United Nations election
inspectors (during the 2002 US elections).
I am the all-time US (and world) record holder for most corporate campaign
donations.
My biggest lifetime campaign contributor, who is also one of my best
friends, presided over one of the largest corporate bankruptcy frauds in
world history (Kenneth Lay, former CEO of Enron Corporation).
I spent more money on polls and focus groups than any president in US
history did.
I am the first president to run and hide when the US came under attack
(and then lied saying the enemy had the code to Air Force 1)
I am the first US president to establish a secret shadow government.
I took the biggest world sympathy for the US after 911, and in less than a
year made the US the most resented country in the world (possibly the
biggest diplomatic failure in US and world history).
I, with a policy of 'disengagement' created the most hostile
Israeli-Palestine relations in at least 30 years.
I am the first US president in history to have a majority of the people of
Europe (71%) view my presidency as the biggest threat to world peace and
stability.
I am the first US president in history to have the people of South Korea
more threatened by the US than their immediate neighbor, North Korea.
I changed US policy to allow convicted criminals to be awarded government
contracts.
I set all-time record for number of administration appointees who violated
US law by not selling huge investments in corporations bidding for
government contracts.
I failed to fulfill my pledge to get Osama Bin Laden 'dead or alive.'
I failed to capture the anthrax killer who tried to murder the leaders of
our country at the United States Capitol building. After 18 months I have no
leads and zero suspects.
In the 18 months following the 911 attacks I have successfully prevented any
public investigation into the biggest security failure in the history of the
United States.
I removed more freedoms and civil liberties for Americans than any other
president in US history.
In a little over two years I created the most divided country in decades,
possibly the most divided the US has ever been since the civil war.
I entered office with the strongest economy in US history and in less than
two years turned every single economic category heading straight down.
* RECORDS AND REFERENCES:

I have At least one conviction for drunk driving in Maine (Texas driving
record has been erased and is not available).
I was AWOL from National Guard and deserted the military during a time of
war.
I refuse to take drug test or even answer any questions about drug use.
All records of my tenure as governor of Texas have been spirited away to my
father's library, sealed in secrecy and unavailable for public view.
All records of any SEC investigations into my insider trading or bankrupt
companies are sealed in secrecy and unavailable for public view.
All minutes of meetings for any public corporation I served on the board are
sealed in secrecy and unavailable for public view.
Any records or minutes from meetings that I (or the VP) attended regarding
public energy policy are sealed in secrecy and unavailable for public
review.
* PERSONAL REFERENCES:

For personal references, please speak to my dad or uncle James Baker
(They can be reached in their offices at the Carlyle Group where they are
helping to divide up the spoils of the US-Iraq war and plan for the next
one.)


"I can't be arsed to explain myself."




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<font color=blue> "Trying is the first step towards failure." </font color=blue>

I think he means worse than any president, as in he's given less press conferences than any president since the advent of television. Now that I think about this I can see it is true. Bush gives LOTS of speeches, but never any press conferences. I can't remember the last time I actually saw him in a press conference. It's always been that Ari Fleisher dude.

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<font color=blue> "Trying is the first step towards failure." </font color=blue>

there is a reason for that. whenever bush has a press conference all questions are screened in advance so bush knows exactly what will be asked and how to respond concordantly. no unscripted questions are allowed. plus bush has shown on more than one occasion his "ability" to "create" new words in the english language. if i was press secretary i would probably keep his press conferences to a minimum as well.

<font color=purple><b><i>The Principle's of the Lust are easy to understand. Do what feel, feel until the end</b></i></font color=purple>

I second that.

<A HREF="http://www.phototalk.net/photos/showgallery.php?cat=3394&ppuser=663" target="_new">My phototalk gallery</A>
<font color=blue>War</font color=blue> <font color=orange>Eagle</font color=orange>

He didn't create the bad economy, it was already falling as a result of the slow of the technology "boom". At the beginning of the technology boom, hardly anyone had computers, so they bought them, and the surge in that sector pushed the rest of the economy forward (Clinton took credit). After everyone had more technology than the knew what to deal with, they quit buying, and other sectors followed (Clinton denied this was happening and people believed him...after all, would Clinton lie [cough]).

So a better thing to say would be:

I saw the economy charging like a raging bull down a hill, so I grabbed it by the horns and drove it into the ground (doh!).

<font color=blue>Watts mean squat if you don't have quality!</font color=blue>

Yes, I didn't mean to imply that he made the economy bad. I meant that his policies have been doing nothing to try and make it better, and it seems like everything he does only serves to make it worse.

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<font color=blue> "Trying is the first step towards failure." </font color=blue>

hehe... yeah that sounds like what a cowboy would do

<b>Melb_angel: PooBaa's <A HREF="http://www.secretarythemovie.com" target="_new">Secretary!</A></b>

A good portion of that statement is true, amazingly. Shadow governments was around during the cold war days just incase if we got nuked. Economy rises and falls, and Bush was at the wrong place at the wrong time, which puts the blame of bad economy on him. I strongly support the soldiers risking their loves for our beloved country, but I didn't think think Operation Iraqi Freedom was justified unless there is another motive that may be revealed in another decade. Before the war, it the reason for going in there was WMD, but during the war, it was freeing the Iraqi from Saddam's reigime, with barely any talk of WMD. It is not a good idea to go ahead into the war without UN behind you. Bush was at the wrong place at the wrong time. And he did made some bad decisions. However, he is certainly not the worst president in US history either.

WHoever authored this is an uninformed idiot...Apart for attributing to Bush things that are clearly not his fault ie biggest one day stock market drop....

The constituion can only be amended by 75% senate majority.

Hello? Carter admin? Anyone remember gas lines...I do

BS...There is more disclosure and public scrutiny now than ever before...

This is my favorite...Ever hear of the War of 1812? Ever hear of the Mexican/ AMerican War. In 1812 it was a land grab for Canada. In the Mexican American War the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo gave us California, Nevada, Utah, Colorado, and New Mexico...Have you ever wondered why they call it "New Mexico". BECAUSE WE STOLE IT FROM THE OLD MEXICO!!!!
I could go on, but you get the point.

Get your own sig!!!

well so far about 4 of tose facts have been discredited by various people here.. what about the rest?: i admit i dont like bush or his attitude towards other countries so if you bush lovers out there can change my mind im listening

double post doh

<font color=purple><b><i>The Principle's of the Lust are easy to understand. Do what feel, feel until the end</b></i></font color=purple><P ID="edit"><FONT SIZE=-1><EM>Edited by jmycal on 06/20/03 09:36 AM.</EM></FONT></P>

The point in refuting a few instead of the whole list is this...If a few facts are completely wrong, it stands to reason that the author did not research what he was writing very carefully. THe point is to discredit the author and therby cast doubt on the entirety of the piece. Its an <i>Ad Hominem </i>attack

Get your own sig!!!

No, I'm not a democrat. Some republican ideas I think are better, and some democratic ideas I think are better. I voted for Nader last election, which I regret because if no one voted for Nader, Gore would be in office and I do think our country would be in a much better position than it is now. I don't have mindless liberal devotion. In fact, I don't like most liberals. They just rub me the wrong way.

Do you really think Bush has been doing the right think this past 2 and a half years since he took office? Because, for the life of me, I can't think of one single thing that makes him a good president. Please, inform me if you think the "resume" is just mindless liberal babble. And yes, read jmycal's message pointing out the quotations that are 100% accurate, and very disturbing.

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<font color=blue> "Trying is the first step towards failure." </font color=blue>

"The California thing really pissed me off. I live in California. This is what went down. So, California deregulated it's power industry. Now, this looked like a good idea because in every other state that did it, prices dropped. Now, an artificial shortage was created by the energy companies (mostly centered in Texas), which then let them raise prices to over 1000 times their previous rates. Governer Davis pleaded with the White House for federal intervention to curb the blatant price gouging, yet was refused. Because of corporate greed (Bush's Texas freind's, mind you), California accrued $15 billion worth of debt, when it could have been avoided."

I no longer live in So. Cal. but I know that is only part of the story.

What about NIMBY? California decided on the deregulation for a number of factors. First was cost of power. They could import it for cheaper costs than they peoduce it at the time. It was a great solution. The problems came with increasing demand and stagnate supply. California did not build one new power plant once deregulation took effect. (to the best of my knowledge) A friend of mine had to spen 9 months retrofitting an older plant after all of this fiasco started. The only power supplier I know had enough supply was LA counties own municipal company. (California is a big state so there could have been other counties that evaded some of the problems.)

So why did I bring up NIMBY? Not In My Back Yard has been the way of life for CA for far too long and it came back and bit them in the butt.

If Davis would own up to his idiocy and would have spent money for new power facilities there wouldn't have been a crisis. There is no accountablility in CA just like there isn't here in NY. Having a big government sucks and it shows.

There is a lot of junk written in the first post. I just don't want to waste my entire lunch hour disproving it.

And I really want to disprove the economics side of it. There are mounds of empirical eveidence to prove the slowdown happened durng the Clinton administration.




<A HREF="http://www.millionmanlan.com/MMLDefault.asp" target="_new">Gaming the THG way... THG sponsors the MML2: June 25-29, 2003 in Louisville Kentucky... Be there!</A>

Yeeeee-Haw! <bang!> <bang!> Boys, we're goin' to Washington!

<font color=blue>Watts mean squat if you don't have quality!</font color=blue>

Strictly from a humanitarian point of view....

What about the torture chambers?
Mass graves?
Destroyed history?
What about the drugs?

<A HREF="http://forums.btvillarin.com/index.php?act=ST&f=41&t=389&s=1fee5dab901bebe29da7aa1c2658fc6f" target="_new"><font color=red>dhlucke's system</font color=red></A>

<font color=blue>GOD</font color=blue> <font color=red>BLESS</font color=red> <font color=blue>AMERICA</font color=blue>

before we say that bush ruined the economy, remember that WTC happened DURING his time in office and and how many different businesses and corporations were located INSIDE the WTC??? I think that would cripple the economy a little dont you??? wow thats right. and many people dont realize but war does cost money... Even if you dont support the war you have to remember that. and also many people were all for the war against al queda(sp?.. doesnt matter) hmmm, how quickly we turn our backs.

--You know, I think Paul Bryant was from the Netherlands.--

-=[ Addicted, Finally. ]=-

Good things...

Tax cuts to all income levels. I enjoy having more money in my pocket to use as I see fit and many other people do as well i'm sure.

Home Land Security. New ways to try to keep Americans in a state of Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness.


<A HREF="http://www.usafreedomcorps.gov/" target="_new">USA Freedom Corps</A>. Another way to empower the people to give back to the their community instead of looking for a "free out of some other guy's pocket" government handdout.


Decrease to the impact to the Marriage Penalty. The same treatment to singles and married couples in reguards to taxation. It still exists but this is one step.


Newer and stronger legislation against corporate fraud. I and the markets enjoy knowing that the book aren't cooked.


I know that there are other things that are good. He has not been a President that has sat on his hands. He has been active to help the American people.


The next is important to me...(This is an opinion so don't kill me for expressing it.)

The legislation to bans in embrionic Stem Cell Research. You can harvest stem cells from adults in larger quantities than you can from a child. (Born or unborn) It sucks that there aren't cures for some things... killing kids so you can "maybe/hopefully" get a cure is wrong. Hitler did some great research in the medical field... very wrong and very unethical... a lot of Jews died while being test lab guinea pigs.

<A HREF="http://www.millionmanlan.com/MMLDefault.asp" target="_new">Gaming the THG way... THG sponsors the MML2: June 25-29, 2003 in Louisville Kentucky... Be there!</A>

Tax cuts to all income levels? Did you know that the vast majority of Bush's tax cuts go to the richest 5%? Cheney saves over $100,000 a year with these new tax cuts. Bill Gates, about $16,000,000 a year. The average American might save $200 a year, if that. With the new dividend tax cuts, most middle class Americans will see nothing at all because most middle class people have all of their stocks in retirement accounts that aren't taxed anyway, until you pull the money out (in which even after Bush's tax cut, you still get taxed the full amount on it). In a time of a struggling economy and increased government spending, tax cuts to the rich is the last thing that should have been done. How much money are you personally going to save?

Homeland Security. An office that constantly issues terror alerts that are vague and never follows up on them. They say that there will be an attack sometime soon, then a couple months later they lower the alert status without an explaination of what was going on. Ya, they're great. Oh, and don't forget about the wonderful USA PATRIOT Act that can make you a terrorist for jaywalking.

I guess I can't say anything bad about the Freedom Corps.

Newer and stronger legislation against corporate fraud? Yes, Bush's friend Kenneth Lay sure has been subject to those laws, hasn't he. Been almost 2 years since that scumbag made millions by ripping off his employees, yet 2 years and nothing... Why? Could Bush really be protecting his freinds like that?

Banning stem cell research is stupid. Taking stem cells from already dead embyros is something I see nothing wrong with. I personally am against abortion, but using the fetuses for some good after the fact only seems logical. Now, instead of all these fetuses potentially curing a disease, they will be thrown into a trashbag and burned. Seems like an awful waste to me.



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<font color=blue> "Trying is the first step towards failure." </font color=blue>

That didn't happen. The British objective was to take Umm Qasr and secure the oil pipeline, which we did. This was to stop the fleeing Iraqi's from destroying it and creating a huge ecological distaster. Once that was secured, the harbour was re-inforced, and the majority of British troops not involved there went to Basra, where they stayed for weeks without storming in totally to ensure minimal civilian casualties.

Oil was never our priority. Yes, it's important, because a free Iraq can generate it's own income and stand on it's own two feet in the financial world, but, from a British point of view, it was about removing Saddam and dismantling his WMD programme, which he undoubtedly had.

Looting was inevitable, as the army isn't a police force. You are talking about a population 100 times, maybe more, than the armed forces personnel. Looting happens everywhere, even in our own countries, especially where law and order breaks down temporarily. As soon as Basra was under British control, thay re-established the long abandoned schooling system, as the Ba'ath party had used them as weapons caches.

<font color=blue>"When you participate in sporting events, it's not whether you win or lose: it's how drunk you get." - Homer Simpson.</font color=blue>

<A HREF="http://www.wage-slave.org/scorecard.html" target="_new">http://www.wage-slave.org/scorecard.html</A>
<A HREF="http://www.wage-slave.org/" target="_new">http://www.wage-slave.org/</A>
About the americorps read this:

President Bush has used both of his State of the Union addresses to highlight volunteerism. In 2002, he created a sort of parent agency -- USA Freedom Corps -- for the federal volunteer agencies. In 2003 he called for even more funding for volunteers. But when the cameras are turned off, his actions don't match his rhetoric. Bush allows Congress to slash funding to AmeriCorps, the successful community service program. AmeriCorps' largest group of volunteers faces a reduction from 16,000 to just 3,000.
from the washington post 06-17-03

un grants us <b><i>WAR CRIMES EXEMPTIONS</b></i>
<A HREF="http://www.salon.com/news/wire/2003/06/12/exempt/index.html" target="_new">http://www.salon.com/news/wire/2003/06/12/exempt/index.html</A>

now after all those nice tidbits which paint a clearer picture of this man and his administration here is what takes the cake

03/29/2003: Neocons planned Iraq for years, and they'll profit
<A HREF="http://www.wage-slave.org/archives/00000084.html" target="_new">http://www.wage-slave.org/archives/00000084.html</A>
03/29/2003: Neocons planned Iraq for years, and they'll profit
Richard Perle's resignation as chairman of the Pentagon's Defense Policy Board provides only a modicum of good news to opponents of his ultra-hawkish views. Perle, who has profitable connections to several companies with Pentagon contracts, will retain a seat on the influential advisory panel, which is stacked with neoconservative ideologues largely responsible for the war in Iraq.


The DPB's role in driving the Bush administration toward the current conflict is difficult to overestimate. The panel, which includes conservative luminaries such as former House speaker Newt Gingrich, former Vice President Dan Quayle, former Secretaries of State Henry Kissinger and George Schultz, and former CIA director James Woolsey, is filled with those who share a singular view of America's role in the world and a long-standing obsession with the removal of Saddam Hussein.


September 11 was a watershed moment for the country and an occasion of great opportunity for the neoconservative hawks. It was simple enough for them to lump Saddam Hussein in with the dangers of global terrorism, even in the absence of any evidence.


The attacks on the Pentagon and World Trade Center towers made it much easier to convince both President Bush and the American people to see the world as a struggle between good and evil, us and them -- and to win for themselves the license to do whatever they deemed necessary to protect us.


But it would be naive to think that without September 11, there would be no Iraq. Perle and his fellow hawks on the DBP and in the administration have been planning a new American imperialism for decades (a plan Joshua Marshall details in this excellent Washington Monthly article).


Following the 1991 Gulf War, neoconservatives were among those who encouraged then-President Bush to follow the Iraqi military back into Iraq to oust Saddam Hussein once and for all. Bush 41's failure to do so infuriated the neocons, whose tepid support contributed to his 1992 defeat.


In 1997, a number of neoconservatives, led by Weekly Standard editor and former Quayle chief of staff William Kristol, formed the Project for the New American Century, a self-described "non-profit, educational organization whose goal is to promote American global leadership."


American global leadership, in this case, meant throwing our military weight around to get what we want. In a 1998 letter, PNAC urged President Clinton to invade Iraq, saying "the only acceptable strategy is one that eliminates the possibility that Iraq will be able to use or threaten to use weapons of mass destruction. In the near term, this means a willingness to undertake military action as diplomacy is clearly failing."


The letter was signed by several people who now hold influential positions in the Bush administration, including Perle, Donald Rumsfeld, Paul Wolfowitz, and Iran-Contra convict and current NSC Middle East policy chief Eliot Abrams, as well as the State Department's Richard Armitage and John Bolton.


Thus it's hardly surprising that the policy laid out in that letter became Bush administration policy. With neither Bush 41 nor Clinton fulfilling their imperialistic fantasies, the neocons finally got the president they needed when George W. Bush was sworn in. Macho, uncurious about complex details, and Manichean in his worldview, Bush provided the perfect front man for the neocons' ambitions.


After September 11, Perle and other hawks kicked their plans for Iraq into high gear. In April 2002, the Washington Post reported that they conducted a partisan purge of the DPB, getting rid of the majority of Democrats on the panel. (Interestingly, Perle still claims to be a Democrat.)


At the time (see 4-18-2002 here), I said the purge would make the DPB little more than "a rubber stamp for Pentagon policy," but the truth was much worse. Its newly partisan nature made it little more than an incestuous neoconservative feedback loop, while its influence ensured that the hawkish view became administration policy.


The goals spelled out in the 1998 PNAC letter were quickly put into place. Although the letter said "diplomacy is clearly failing," Bush made a doomed diplomacy push for public relations and political value, always making it clear that we were invading Iraq with or without international support.


As I write this, bombs are falling on Baghdad. Americans, Britons, and Iraqis have died in this war, and many deaths will follow.


Meanwhile, Richard Perle and many like him will see a tidy profit from the conflict. He and his ilk have seen it coming for years, and have worked to make it happen. His decision to make money from the war shows an excellent instinct for finance and a complete lack of ethics. His continued service on the Defense Policy Board is another sign of the Bush administration's commitment to loyalty at the expense of -- to use presidential candidate George W. Bush's words -- honor and dignity

<b>Practice to Deceive</b>

<b>Chaos in the Middle East is not the Bush hawks' nightmare scenario--it's their plan.
</b>

<A HREF="http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/features/2003/0304.marshall.html" target="_new">http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/features/2003/0304.marshall.html</A>

Imagine it's six months from now. The Iraq war is over. After an initial burst of joy and gratitude at being liberated from Saddam's rule, the people of Iraq are watching, and waiting, and beginning to chafe under American occupation. Across the border, in Syria, Saudi Arabia, and Iran, our conquering presence has brought street protests and escalating violence. The United Nations and NATO are in disarray, so America is pretty much on its own. Hemmed in by budget deficits at home and limited financial assistance from allies, the Bush administration is talking again about tapping Iraq's oil reserves to offset some of the costs of the American presence--talk that is further inflaming the region. Meanwhile, U.S. intelligence has discovered fresh evidence that, prior to the war, Saddam moved quantities of biological and chemical weapons to Syria. When Syria denies having such weapons, the administration starts massing troops on the Syrian border. But as they begin to move, there is an explosion: Hezbollah terrorists from southern Lebanon blow themselves up in a Baghdad restaurant, killing dozens of Western aid workers and journalists. Knowing that Hezbollah has cells in America, Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge puts the nation back on Orange Alert. FBI agents start sweeping through mosques, with a new round of arrests of Saudis, Pakistanis, Palestinians, and Yemenis.

To most Americans, this would sound like a frightening state of affairs, the kind that would lead them to wonder how and why we had got ourselves into this mess in the first place. But to the Bush administration hawks who are guiding American foreign policy, this isn't the nightmare scenario. It's everything going as anticipated.

In their view, invasion of Iraq was not merely, or even primarily, about getting rid of Saddam Hussein. Nor was it really about weapons of mass destruction, though their elimination was an important benefit. Rather, the administration sees the invasion as only the first move in a wider effort to reorder the power structure of the entire Middle East. Prior to the war, the president himself never quite said this openly. But hawkish neoconservatives within his administration gave strong hints. In February, Undersecretary of State John Bolton told Israeli officials that after defeating Iraq, the United States would "deal with" Iran, Syria, and North Korea. Meanwhile, neoconservative journalists have been channeling the administration's thinking. Late last month, The Weekly Standard's Jeffrey Bell reported that the administration has in mind a "world war between the United States and a political wing of Islamic fundamentalism ... a war of such reach and magnitude [that] the invasion of Iraq, or the capture of top al Qaeda commanders, should be seen as tactical events in a series of moves and countermoves stretching well into the future."

In short, the administration is trying to roll the table--to use U.S. military force, or the threat of it, to reform or topple virtually every regime in the region, from foes like Syria to friends like Egypt, on the theory that it is the undemocratic nature of these regimes that ultimately breeds terrorism. So events that may seem negative--Hezbollah for the first time targeting American civilians; U.S. soldiers preparing for war with Syria--while unfortunate in themselves, are actually part of the hawks' broader agenda. Each crisis will draw U.S. forces further into the region and each countermove in turn will create problems that can only be fixed by still further American involvement, until democratic governments--or, failing that, U.S. troops--rule the entire Middle East.

There is a startling amount of deception in all this--of hawks deceiving the American people, and perhaps in some cases even themselves. While it's conceivable that bold American action could democratize the Middle East, so broad and radical an initiative could also bring chaos and bloodshed on a massive scale. That all too real possibility leads most establishment foreign policy hands, including many in the State Department, to view the Bush plan with alarm. Indeed, the hawks' record so far does not inspire confidence. Prior to the invasion, for instance, they predicted that if the United States simply announced its intention to act against Saddam regardless of how the United Nations voted, most of our allies, eager to be on our good side, would support us. Almost none did. Yet despite such grave miscalculations, the hawks push on with their sweeping new agenda.

Like any group of permanent Washington revolutionaries fueled by visions of a righteous cause, the neocons long ago decided that criticism from the establishment isn't a reason for self-doubt but the surest sign that they're on the right track. But their confidence also comes from the curious fact that much of what could go awry with their plan will also serve to advance it. A full-scale confrontation between the United States and political Islam, they believe, is inevitable, so why not have it now, on our terms, rather than later, on theirs? Actually, there are plenty of good reasons not to purposely provoke a series of crises in the Middle East. But that's what the hawks are setting in motion, partly on the theory that the worse things get, the more their approach becomes the only plausible solution.

Moral Cloudiness

Ever since the neocons burst upon the public policy scene 30 years ago, their movement has been a marriage of moral idealism, military assertiveness, and deception. Back in the early 1970s, this group of then-young and still mostly Democratic political intellectuals grew alarmed by the post-Vietnam Democrats' seeming indifference to the Soviet threat. They were equally appalled, however, by the amoral worldview espoused by establishment Republicans like Henry Kissinger, who sought co-existence with the Soviet Union. As is often the case with ex-socialists, the neocons were too familiar with communist tactics to ignore or romanticize communism's evils. The fact that many neocons were Jewish, and outraged by Moscow's increasingly visible persecution of Jews, also caused them to reject both the McGovernite and Kissingerian tendencies to ignore such abuses.

In Ronald Reagan, the neocons found a politician they could embrace. Like them, Reagan spoke openly about the evils of communism and, at least on the peripheries of the Cold War, preferred rollback to coexistence. Neocons filled the Reagan administration, and men like Paul Wolfowitz, Richard Perle, Frank Gaffney, and others provided the intellectual ballast and moral fervor for the sharp turn toward confrontation that the United States adopted in 1981.

But achieving moral clarity often requires hiding certain realities. From the beginning, the neocons took a much more alarmist view of Soviet capacities and intentions than most experts. As late as 1980, the ur-neocon Norman Podhoretz warned of the imminent "Finlandization of America, the political and economic subordination of the United States to superior Soviet power," even raising the possibility that America's only options might be "surrender or war." We now know, of course, that U.S. intelligence estimates, which many neocons thought underestimated the magnitude and durability of Soviet power, in fact wildly overestimated them.

This willingness to deceive--both themselves and others--expanded as neocons grew more comfortable with power. Many spent the Reagan years orchestrating bloody wars against Soviet proxies in the Third World, portraying thugs like the Nicaraguan Contras and plain murderers like Jonas Savimbi of Angola as "freedom fighters." The nadir of this deceit was the Iran-Contra scandal, for which Podhoretz's son-in-law, Elliot Abrams, pled guilty to perjury. Abrams was later pardoned by Bush's father, and today, he runs Middle East policy in the Bush White House.

But in the end, the Soviet Union did fall. And the hawks' policy of confrontation did contribute to its collapse. So too, of course, did the economic and military rot most of the hawks didn't believe in, and the reforms of Mikhail Gorbachev, whom neocons such as Richard Perle counseled Reagan not to trust. But the neocons did not dwell on what they got wrong. Rather, the experience of having played a hand in the downfall of so great an evil led them to the opposite belief: that it's okay to be spectacularly wrong, even brazenly deceptive about the details, so long as you have moral vision and a willingness to use force.

What happened in the 1990s further reinforced that mindset. Hawks like Perle and William Kristol pulled their hair out when Kissingerians like Brent Scowcroft and Colin Powell left Saddam's regime in place after the first Gulf War. They watched with mounting fury as terrorist attacks by Muslim fundamentalists claimed more and more American and Israeli lives. They considered the Oslo accords an obvious mistake (how can you negotiate with a man like Yasir Arafat?), and as the decade progressed they became increasingly convinced that there was a nexus linking burgeoning terrorism and mounting anti-Semitism with repressive but nominally "pro-American" regimes like Saudi Arabia and Egypt. In 1996, several of the hawks--including Perle--even tried to sell Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on the idea that Israel should attack Saddam on its own--advice Netanyahu wisely declined. When the Oslo process crumbled and Saudi Arabian terrorists killed 3,000 Americans on 9/11, the hawks felt, not without some justification, that they had seen this danger coming all along, while others had ignored it. The timing was propitious, because in September 2001 many already held jobs with a new conservative president willing to hear their pitch.

Prime Minister bin Laden

The pitch was this: The Middle East today is like the Soviet Union 30 years ago. Politically warped fundamentalism is the contemporary equivalent of communism or fascism. Terrorists with potential access to weapons of mass destruction are like an arsenal pointed at the United States. The primary cause of all this danger is the Arab world's endemic despotism, corruption, poverty, and economic stagnation. Repressive regimes channel dissent into the mosques, where the hopeless and disenfranchised are taught a brand of Islam that combines anti-modernism, anti-Americanism, and a worship of violence that borders on nihilism. Unable to overthrow their own authoritarian rulers, the citizenry turns its fury against the foreign power that funds and supports these corrupt regimes to maintain stability and access to oil: the United States. As Johns Hopkins University professor Fouad Ajami recently wrote in Foreign Affairs, "The great indulgence granted to the ways and phobias of Arabs has reaped a terrible harvest"--terrorism. Trying to "manage" this dysfunctional Islamic world, as Clinton attempted and Colin Powell counsels us to do, is as foolish, unproductive, and dangerous as détente was with the Soviets, the hawks believe. Nor is it necessary, given the unparalleled power of the American military. Using that power to confront Soviet communism led to the demise of that totalitarianism and the establishment of democratic (or at least non-threatening) regimes from the Black Sea to the Baltic Sea to the Bering Strait. Why not use that same power to upend the entire corrupt Middle East edifice and bring liberty, democracy, and the rule of law to the Arab world?

The hawks' grand plan differs depending on whom you speak to, but the basic outline runs like this: The United States establishes a reasonably democratic, pro-Western government in Iraq--assume it falls somewhere between Turkey and Jordan on the spectrum of democracy and the rule of law. Not perfect, representative democracy, certainly, but a system infinitely preferable to Saddam's. The example of a democratic Iraq will radically change the political dynamics of the Middle East. When Palestinians see average Iraqis beginning to enjoy real freedom and economic opportunity, they'll want the same themselves. With that happy prospect on one hand and implacable United States will on the other, they'll demand that the Palestinian Authority reform politically and negotiate with Israel. That in turn will lead to a real peace deal between the Israelis and Palestinians. A democratic Iraq will also hasten the fall of the fundamentalist Shi'a mullahs in Iran, whose citizens are gradually adopting anti-fanatic, pro-Western sympathies. A democratized Iran would create a string of democratic, pro-Western governments (Turkey, Iraq, and Iran) stretching across the historical heartland of Islam. Without a hostile Iraq towering over it, Jordan's pro-Western Hashemite monarchy would likely come into full bloom. Syria would be no more than a pale reminder of the bad old days. (If they made trouble, a U.S. invasion would take care of them, too.) And to the tiny Gulf emirates making hesitant steps toward democratization, the corrupt regimes of Saudi Arabia and Egypt would no longer look like examples of stability and strength in a benighted region, but holdouts against the democratic tide. Once the dust settles, we could decide whether to ignore them as harmless throwbacks to the bad old days or deal with them, too. We'd be in a much stronger position to do so since we'd no longer require their friendship to help us manage ugly regimes in Iraq, Iran, and Syria.

The audacious nature of the neocons' plan makes it easy to criticize but strangely difficult to dismiss outright. Like a character in a bad made-for-TV thriller from the 1970s, you can hear yourself saying, "That plan's just crazy enough to work."

But like a TV plot, the hawks' vision rests on a willing suspension of disbelief, in particular, on the premise that every close call will break in our favor: The guard will fall asleep next to the cell so our heroes can pluck the keys from his belt. The hail of enemy bullets will plink-plink-plink over our heroes' heads. And the getaway car in the driveway will have the keys waiting in the ignition. Sure, the hawks' vision could come to pass. But there are at least half a dozen equally plausible alternative scenarios that would be disastrous for us.

To begin with, this whole endeavor is supposed to be about reducing the long-term threat of terrorism, particularly terrorism that employs weapons of mass destruction. But, to date, every time a Western or non-Muslim country has put troops into Arab lands to stamp out violence and terror, it has awakened entire new terrorist organizations and a generation of recruits. Placing U.S. troops in Riyadh after the Gulf War (to protect Saudi Arabia and its oilfields from Saddam) gave Osama bin Laden a cause around which he built al Qaeda. Israel took the West Bank in a war of self-defense, but once there its occupation helped give rise to Hamas. Israel's incursion into southern Lebanon (justified at the time, but transformed into a permanent occupation) led to the rise of Hezbollah. Why do we imagine that our invasion and occupation of Iraq, or whatever countries come next, will turn out any differently?

The Bush administration also insists that our right to act preemptively and unilaterally, with or without the international community's formal approval, rests on the need to protect American lives. But with the exception of al Qaeda, most terrorist organizations in the world, and certainly in the Middle East, do not target Americans. Hamas certainly doesn't. Hezbollah, the most fearsome of terrorist organizations beside al Qaeda, has killed American troops in the Middle East, but not for some years, and it has never targeted American civilians on American soil. Yet like Hamas, Hezbollah has an extensive fundraising cell operation in the States (as do many terrorist organizations, including the Irish Republican Army). If we target them in the Middle East, can't we reasonably assume they will respond by activating these cells and taking the war worldwide?

Next, consider the hawks' plans for those Middle East states that are authoritarian yet "friendly" to the United States--specifically Egypt and Saudi Arabia. No question these are problem countries. Their governments buy our weapons and accept our foreign aid yet allow vicious anti-Semitism to spew from the state run airwaves and tolerate clerics who preach jihad against the West. But is it really in our interests to work for their overthrow? Many hawks clearly think so. I asked Richard Perle last year about the dangers that might flow from the fall of Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak. "Mubarak is no great shakes," he quipped. "Surely we can do better than Mubarak." When I asked Perle's friend and fellow Reagan-era neocon Ken Adelman to calculate the costs of having the toppling of Saddam lead to the overthrow of the House of Saud, he shot back: "All the better if you ask me."

This cavalier call for regime change, however, runs into a rather obvious problem. When the communist regimes of Eastern and Central Europe fell after 1989, the people of those nations felt grateful to the United States because we helped liberate them from their Russian colonial masters. They went on to create pro-Western democracies. The same is unlikely to happen, however, if we help "liberate" Saudi Arabia and Egypt. The tyrannies in these countries are home grown, and the U.S. government has supported them, rightly or wrongly, for decades, even as we've ignored (in the eyes of Arabs) the plight of the Palestinians. Consequently, the citizens of these countries generally hate the United States, and show strong sympathy for Islamic radicals. If free elections were held in Saudi Arabia today, Osama bin Laden would probably win more votes than Crown Prince Abdullah. Topple the pro-Western autocracies in these countries, in other words, and you won't get pro-Western democracies but anti-Western tyrannies.

To this dilemma, the hawks offer two responses. One is that eventually the citizens of Egypt and Saudi Arabia will grow disenchanted with their anti-Western Islamic governments, just as the people of Iran have, and become our friends. To which the correct response is, well, sure, that's a nice theory, but do we really want to make the situation for ourselves hugely worse now on the strength of a theoretical future benefit?

The hawks' other response is that if the effort to push these countries toward democracy goes south, we can always use our military might to secure our interests. "We need to be more assertive," argues Max Boot, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, "and stop letting all these two-bit dictators and rogue regimes push us around and stop being a patsy for our so-called allies, especially in Saudi Arabia." Hopefully, in Boot's view, laying down the law will be enough. But he envisions a worst-case scenario that would involve the United States "occupying the Saudi's oil fields and administering them as a trust for the people of the region."

What Boot is calling for, in other words, is the creation of a de facto American empire in the Middle East. In fact, there's a subset of neocons who believe that given our unparalleled power, empire is our destiny and we might as well embrace it. The problem with this line of thinking is, of course, that it ignores the lengthy and troubling history of imperial ambitions, particularly in the Middle East. The French and the English didn't leave voluntarily; they were driven out. And they left behind a legacy of ignorance, exploitation, and corruption that's largely responsible for the region's current dysfunctional politics.

Another potential snafu for the hawks is Iran, arguably the most dangerous state in the Middle East. The good news is that the fundamentalist Shi'a mullahs who have been running the government, exporting terrorism, and trying to enrich their uranium, are increasingly unpopular. Most experts believe that the mullahs' days are numbered, and that true democracy will come to Iran. That day will arrive sooner, the hawks argue, with a democratic Iraq on Iran's border. But the opposite could happen. If the mullahs are smart, they'll cooperate just enough with the Americans not to provoke an attack, but put themselves forth to their own people as defenders of Iranian independence and Iran's brother Shi'a in southern Iraq who are living under the American jackboot. Such a strategy might keep the fundamentalists in power for years longer than they otherwise might have been.

Then there is the mother of all problems, Iraq. The hawks' whole plan rests on the assumption that we can turn it into a self-governing democracy--that the very presence of that example will transform politics in the Middle East. But what if we can't really create a democratic, self-governing Iraq, at least not very quickly? What if the experience we had after World War II in Germany and Japan, two ethnically homogeneous nations, doesn't quite work in an ethnically divided Iraq where one group, the Sunni Arabs, has spent decades repressing and slaughtering the others? As one former Army officer with long experience with the Iraq file explains it, the "physical analogy to Saddam Hussein's regime is a steel beam in compression." Give it one good hit, and you'll get a violent explosion. One hundred thousand U.S. troops may be able to keep a lid on all the pent-up hatred. But we may soon find that it's unwise to hand off power to the fractious Iraqis. To invoke the ugly but apt metaphor which Jefferson used to describe the American dilemma of slavery, we will have the wolf by the ears. You want to let go. But you dare not.

And what if we do muster the courage to allow elections, but the Iraqis choose a government we can't live with--as the Japanese did in their first post-war election, when the United States purged the man slated to become prime minister? But if we do that in Iraq, how will it look on Al Jazeera? Ultimately, the longer we stay as occupiers, the more Iraq becomes not an example for other Arabs to emulate, but one that helps Islamic fundamentalists make their case that America is just an old-fashioned imperium bent on conquering Arab lands. And that will make worse all the problems set forth above.

None of these problems are inevitable, of course. Luck, fortitude, deft management, and help from allies could bring about very different results. But we can probably only rely on the first three because we are starting this enterprise over the expressed objections of almost every other country in the world. And that's yet another reason why overthrowing the Middle East won't be the same as overthrowing communism. We did the latter, after all, within a tight formal alliance, NATO. Reagan's most effective military move against Moscow, for instance, placing Pershing II missiles in Western Europe, could never have happened, given widespread public protests, except that NATO itself voted to let the weapons in. In the Middle East, however, we're largely alone. If things go badly, what allies we might have left are liable to say to us: You broke it, you fix it.

Whacking the Hornet's Nest

If the Bush administration has thought through these various negative scenarios--and we must presume, or at least pray, that it has--it certainly has not shared them with the American people. More to the point, the president has not even leveled with the public that such a clean-sweep approach to the Middle East is, in fact, their plan. This breaks new ground in the history of pre-war presidential deception. Franklin Roosevelt said he was trying to keep the United States out of World War II even as he--in some key ways--courted a confrontation with the Axis powers that he saw as both inevitable and necessary. History has judged him well for this. Far more brazenly, Lyndon Johnson's administration greatly exaggerated the Gulf of Tonkin incident to gin up support for full-throttle engagement in Vietnam. The war proved to be Johnson's undoing. When President Clinton used American troops to quell the fighting in Bosnia he said publicly that our troops would be there no longer than a year, even though it was widely understood that they would be there far longer. But in the case of these deceptions, the public was at least told what the goals of the wars were and whom and where we would be fighting.

Today, however, the great majority of the American people have no concept of what kind of conflict the president is leading them into. The White House has presented this as a war to depose Saddam Hussein in order to keep him from acquiring weapons of mass destruction--a goal that the majority of Americans support. But the White House really has in mind an enterprise of a scale, cost, and scope that would be almost impossible to sell to the American public. The White House knows that. So it hasn't even tried. Instead, it's focused on getting us into Iraq with the hope of setting off a sequence of events that will draw us inexorably towards the agenda they have in mind.

The brazenness of this approach would be hard to believe if it weren't entirely in line with how the administration has pursued so many of its other policy goals. Its preferred method has been to use deceit to create faits accomplis, facts on the ground that then make the administration's broader agenda almost impossible not to pursue. During and after the 2000 campaign, the president called for major education and prescription drug programs plus a huge tax cut, saying America could easily afford them all because of large budget surpluses. Critics said it wasn't true, and the growing budget deficits have proven them right. But the administration now uses the existence of big budget deficits as a way to put the squeeze on social programs--part of its plan all along. Strip away the presidential seal and the fancy titles, and it's just a straight-up con.

The same strategy seemed to guide the administration's passive-aggressive attitude towards our allies. It spent the months after September 11 signaling its distaste for international agreements and entangling alliances. The president then demanded last September that the same countries he had snubbed support his agenda in Iraq. And last month, when most of those countries refused, hawks spun that refusal as evidence that they were right all along. Recently, a key neoconservative commentator with close ties to the administration told me that the question since the end of the Cold War has been which global force would create the conditions for global peace and security: the United States, NATO, or the United Nations. With NATO now wrecked, he told me, the choice is between the United States and the United Nations. Whether NATO is actually wrecked remains to be seen. But the strategy is clear: push the alliance to the breaking point, and when it snaps, cite it as proof that the alliance was good for nothing anyway. It's the definition of chutzpah, like the kid who kills his parents and begs the judge for sympathy because he's an orphan.

Another president may be able to rebuild NATO or get the budget back in balance. But once America begins the process of remaking the Middle East in the way the hawks have in mind, it will be extremely difficult for any president to pull back. Vietnam analogies have long been overused, and used inappropriately, but this may be one case where the comparison is apt.

Ending Saddam Hussein's regime and replacing it with something stable and democratic was always going to be a difficult task, even with the most able leadership and the broadest coalition. But doing it as the Bush administration now intends is something like going outside and giving a few good whacks to a hornets' nest because you want to get them out in the open and have it out with them once and for all. Ridding the world of Islamic terrorism by rooting out its ultimate sources--Muslim fundamentalism and the Arab world's endemic despotism, corruption, and poverty--might work. But the costs will be immense. Whether the danger is sufficient and the costs worth incurring would make for an interesting public debate. The problem is that once it's just us and the hornets, we really won't have any choice

then for $hites and giggles read this letter sent from the pnac to then president Bill Clinton in <b>1998</b>
<A HREF="http://www.newamericancentury.org/iraqclintonletter.htm" target="_new">http://www.newamericancentury.org/iraqclintonletter.htm</A>
The Honorable William J. Clinton
President of the United States
Washington, DC


Dear Mr. President:

We are writing you because we are convinced that current American policy toward Iraq is not succeeding, and that we may soon face a threat in the Middle East more serious than any we have known since the end of the Cold War. In your upcoming State of the Union Address, you have an opportunity to chart a clear and determined course for meeting this threat. We urge you to seize that opportunity, and to enunciate a new strategy that would secure the interests of the U.S. and our friends and allies around the world. That strategy should aim, above all, at the removal of Saddam Hussein’s regime from power. We stand ready to offer our full support in this difficult but necessary endeavor.

The policy of “containment” of Saddam Hussein has been steadily eroding over the past several months. As recent events have demonstrated, we can no longer depend on our partners in the Gulf War coalition to continue to uphold the sanctions or to punish Saddam when he blocks or evades UN inspections. Our ability to ensure that Saddam Hussein is not producing weapons of mass destruction, therefore, has substantially diminished. Even if full inspections were eventually to resume, which now seems highly unlikely, experience has shown that it is difficult if not impossible to monitor Iraq’s chemical and biological weapons production. The lengthy period during which the inspectors will have been unable to enter many Iraqi facilities has made it even less likely that they will be able to uncover all of Saddam’s secrets. As a result, in the not-too-distant future we will be unable to determine with any reasonable level of confidence whether Iraq does or does not possess such weapons.


Such uncertainty will, by itself, have a seriously destabilizing effect on the entire Middle East. It hardly needs to be added that if Saddam does acquire the capability to deliver weapons of mass destruction, as he is almost certain to do if we continue along the present course, the safety of American troops in the region, of our friends and allies like Israel and the moderate Arab states, and a significant portion of the world’s supply of oil will all be put at hazard. As you have rightly declared, Mr. President, the security of the world in the first part of the 21st century will be determined largely by how we handle this threat.


Given the magnitude of the threat, the current policy, which depends for its success upon the steadfastness of our coalition partners and upon the cooperation of Saddam Hussein, is dangerously inadequate. The only acceptable strategy is one that eliminates the possibility that Iraq will be able to use or threaten to use weapons of mass destruction. In the near term, this means a willingness to undertake military action as diplomacy is clearly failing. In the long term, it means removing Saddam Hussein and his regime from power. That now needs to become the aim of American foreign policy.

We urge you to articulate this aim, and to turn your Administration's attention to implementing a strategy for removing Saddam's regime from power. This will require a full complement of diplomatic, political and military efforts. Although we are fully aware of the dangers and difficulties in implementing this policy, we believe the dangers of failing to do so are far greater. We believe the U.S. has the authority under existing UN resolutions to take the necessary steps, including military steps, to protect our vital interests in the Gulf. In any case, American policy cannot continue to be crippled by a misguided insistence on unanimity in the UN Security Council.

We urge you to act decisively. If you act now to end the threat of weapons of mass destruction against the U.S. or its allies, you will be acting in the most fundamental national security interests of the country. If we accept a course of weakness and drift, we put our interests and our future at risk.

Sincerely,

Elliott Abrams Richard L. Armitage William J. Bennett

Jeffrey Bergner John Bolton Paula Dobriansky

Francis Fukuyama Robert Kagan Zalmay Khalilzad

William Kristol Richard Perle Peter W. Rodman

Donald Rumsfeld William Schneider, Jr. Vin Weber

Paul Wolfowitz R. James Woolsey Robert B. Zoellick

then there was the removal of democrats from the pentagon defense board
<A HREF="http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn?pagename=article&node=&contentId=A4547-2002Apr17¬Found=true" target="_new">http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn?pagename=article&node=&contentId=A4547-2002Apr17¬Found=true</A>

Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, April 18, 2002; Page A19



The Pentagon has removed several prominent Democrats from prestigious advisory boards that traditionally have been bipartisan, sparking allegations that the Bush administration is seeking to pack the panels with experts who agree with its positions.

Among the people who have been removed over the last year are former National Intelligence Council chairman Joseph S. Nye, former U.S. ambassador to NATO Robert Hunter, former Defense Department general counsel Judith Miller, former Pentagon policy official Ashton Carter and former Senate Democratic staffer Frank Sullivan.

Pentagon officials deny that the changes are politically motivated, as do some Democrats on the advisory panels. They say the moves are part of the normal turnover associated with new administrations, and specifically reflect Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld's desire to be advised less by academics and more by veteran policymakers.

"They were chosen for their experience and insights -- political persuasions are irrelevant," Pentagon spokeswoman Victoria Clarke said earlier this week of those being chosen. "The boards' membership reflects Secretary Rumsfeld's principles regarding all Defense Department matters -- that is, we are nonpartisan in all that we do."

But the turnover is creating a stir within the world of defense experts at think tanks and universities. Many are pointing to the changes as further evidence that Rumsfeld is interested mainly in surrounding himself with people who agree with him and the administration on major policy issues. They and others further argue that in light of the global offensive against terrorism, the Pentagon should be reaching out across party lines, as is traditional in the United States during wartime.

"One of the first things they did when they came in was kick us off," said Nye, a former member of the Defense Policy Board who is now dean of Harvard's Kennedy School of Government.

Hunter, who also was dropped from the policy board last year, said, "It was a purge of Democrats."

The case of Miller, formerly the Pentagon's top lawyer, especially raised eyebrows because she was named to the Defense Science Board only a year earlier, while some people have served on it for decades. The duration of service on the boards is a hazy matter, with some people appointed for a year, and others for two or three, but with most serving for several years at a time. Miller declined to comment.

Some of those dropped from the boards contend that the Rumsfeld Pentagon has abandoned a tradition of bipartisanship.

"When I was in the Pentagon, we had people like Perle and Wolfowitz on the policy board," Nye said, referring to Richard Perle, the current head of the policy board, and Paul Wolfowitz, the current deputy secretary of defense. Others noted that at the end of the Clinton administration, the head of the policy board was Brent Scowcroft, a national security adviser to two Republican presidents.

It may seem odd to include representatives of the political opposition in a policy advisory board, but current and former members of the boards said it helps smooth the formulation of policy and its implementation with Congress.

"At some point, you're going to have to deal with Congress, so it would be good . . . to have input from people with points of view different from yours," said Paul Kaminski, a Pentagon acquisition chief during the Clinton administration.

The dispute is taking more significance than it would have in the past because the boards have higher profiles now than they have had in previous administrations. Perle has made the policy board a platform for his views, especially his advocacy of an aggressive stance toward Iraq. William Schneider Jr., the head of the science board, looms even larger at the Pentagon because he is close to Rumsfeld, who is known for having few confidants.

Of the 31 members of the policy board, 17 are associated with the Republican Party -- most notably former vice president Dan Quayle, former secretary of state Henry Kissinger and former House speaker Newt Gingrich (R-Ga.). Six others are retired military officers not prominent in party politics, and four are academics or people whose political affiliations could not be determined. There are a few Democrats, most notably Harold Brown, defense secretary in the Carter administration, and former House speaker Thomas S. Foley (Wash.).

Perle, who is most prominent for his service in the Pentagon during the Reagan administration, said he remains a registered Democrat. Perle noted that he was an aide to the late senator Henry M. "Scoop" Jackson, a hawkish Democrat from Washington state, longer than he was in the Reagan Pentagon. Including himself, he counted five Democrats on his board.

Perle also said the character of the board has changed more than its ideology, with fewer academics and more former senior government officials.

"Rumsfeld wanted people with great experience . . . people with policymaking experience," he said. He also argued that under Rumsfeld, the policy board has been revitalized. "During the Clinton period, it was a board that frankly stressed academic qualifications," he said. "It met in a rather unenergetic way."

The science board also has 31 members, according to a list released by the Pentagon, with almost all drawn from academia, the defense industry or the military. Schneider said that "political affiliation is not a criteria" for membership on the panel and noted that two former senior officials from the Clinton Pentagon recently have been tapped for it.

Robert J. Hermann, who during the latter part of the Carter administration headed the National Reconnaissance Office, which operates intelligence satellites, said he saw "no more than usual" partisanship in the handling of the science board. Hermann described himself as a nominal Democrat.

"I think it's bunk that they're being purged of Democrats," said Kenneth Adelman, who served in the first Bush administration's Pentagon and is now a member of the policy board. "We have wonderful Democrats on the board, and work with them very closely and value their counsel."

Barry Blechman, a Democratic defense expert who is a new member of the policy board, agreed, saying, "Old advisers go out and new advisers come in."



<font color=purple><b><i>The Principle's of the Lust are easy to understand. Do what feel, feel until the end</b></i></font color=purple>

thanx btw i don't hate this country or the military (because they do provide valuable service) but i have a severe dislike for this administration and what they are doing.

<font color=purple><b><i>The Principle's of the Lust are easy to understand. Do what feel, feel until the end</b></i></font color=purple>

Dang....longest msg I've ever seen on here!

<A HREF="http://www.phototalk.net/photos/showgallery.php?cat=3394&ppuser=663" target="_new">My phototalk gallery</A>
<font color=blue>War</font color=blue> <font color=orange>Eagle</font color=orange>

Most of you "kids" need a generation or two to truely understand "democracy" and expediency - and the differencce between the two. USA is not perfect - but we're better than what's in 2'nd place. The only way to truely contain the hatred inherent in Islamic rule (hatered of the "west"=infidels=most of you) is to show that it can not survive - either thru it's own failure or thru defeat. Either way is fine with me. The quicker the better. Practice whatever religion you want - hell, worship monkeys if you'd like - but don't come after me and my friends - it will not be worth it!

But Officer, I wasn't speeding - I was qualifying ...

intolerance of other cultures is what causes all these problems in the first place. do you really think that the rest of the arab world will resent us less once we start invading their countries to "liberate" them from "tyranny"? we as humans need to understand and tolerate people who are different, otherwise we are no better ourselves.

<font color=purple><b><i>The Principle's of the Lust are easy to understand. Do what feel, feel until the end</b></i></font color=purple>