I just didn’t know about such things – Neoconservatives, the Project for the New American Century, the American Enterprise Institute, the Federalist Society, the Hudson Institute, etc. Those of us who read the blogs do know that history, about the rise of the Neoconservatives and their incorporation into the Bush Administration. We know about the plan to unseat Saddam Hussein that antedated Bush’s election. We know about Paul Wolfowitz’s Defense Guidance of 1991 that morphed into the Bush Doctrine. We’ve read about Michael Ledeen and Laurie Mylroie, some of the early anti-Iranian anti-Iraqi Hawks. We’ve read first hand the early venom of John Bolton, or the place of Richard Perle, or the Kagans or the Kristols. To us, it’s a coherent picture of a right wing takeover of our government with a long history and a lot of key players. But many, maybe most have no idea of the places where all of this craziness originated.
Over the last few years, I returned to http://www.newamericancentury.org over and over. While I was usually looking up something like who signed the Clinton letter? or who were the P.N.A.C. founders?, I think a lot of my visits were for a reminder that this whole neoconservative lunacy was real. Somehow, seeing it there in black and white helped me to not get concerned that I was making something up. Those people really did do what I thought they did.
: )