America’s Psychopathic Establishment

• America’s Psychopathic Establishment
  by ERIC ZUESSE, http://www.strategic-culture.org/  
  It’s not only the right-wing think tanks (such as the Hudson Institute and the Rand Corporation) that urge America to invade countries that pose no threat against the US, but also liberal think tanks (such as the Open Society Foundation and the Brookings Institution) that urge firebombing of cities and even ethnic cleansing in order to defeat foreign leaders whom the American aristocracy want to overthrow.
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  Though there is space here to mention just a few examples of these «liberal» psychopaths, these will be representative ones.
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  In 2002, Kenneth Pollack of the Brookings Institution came forth with his book, The Threatening Storm: The Case for Invading Iraq. As the Council on Foreign Relations promoted it:
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  «This highly influential book, written as the Bush administration turned its sights on Saddam Hussein’s regime, takes the reader back to the pre-war days of uncertainty about Saddam’s weapons and his ties to major terrorist organizations, outlining a powerful case for a US invasion of Iraq. Senior Fellow Kenneth Pollack argues that to prevent Saddam from acquiring nuclear weapons, the United States has little choice [but] to topple the regime, eradicate its weapons of mass destruction, and rebuild the country as a prosperous and stable society».
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  Upon the book’s publication, the CFR issued a press release about it, saying:
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  «Building on his acclaimed March 2002 Foreign Affairs article, ‘Next Stop Baghdad?’, Pollack lays out five options available to the United States – bolstering containment, depending on a formal deterrence policy, mounting a covert action campaign, relying on airpower and the Iraqi opposition, and launching a full-scale invasion – and argues that none of the first four are realistic anymore. Therefore, only a full-scale invasion involving several hundred thousand American soldiers can deal with the growing threat».
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  Pollack subsequently blamed the Bush Administration for having misled him; and, by May of 2003 (after the March 19th invasion), he was saying that this book of his, which argued for the urgency of invading Iraq in order to block Saddam Hussein’s supposed nuclear-bomb program, was concerned instead only about «a much more distant threat. And the real threat that I felt from Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction program was the potential for Iraq to eventually develop nuclear weapons». When the interviewer asked how shaky was the evidence on the basis of which Pollack had urged an immediate invasion, Pollack answered, «you’re now getting beyond my area of expertise».
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  Was he fired, for his dangerous and unfounded ‘expert’ presentation of his suspicions as if they were instead facts? No, he’s still with Brookings, and still being treated by the Establishment and its ‘news’ media as if he were a respectable person and a foreign-policy ‘expert’, not mere lethal propagandist for America’s voracious aristocracy.
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