> The only real problem with accepting that anyone in power actually thinks
> this is that I've never seen a text where a neocon actually puts it forth,
> not even in the kind of obscure AEI books where they put forth such winners
> as reinstalling the Hashemites in Iraq. So I'm not positive this isn't an
> extrapolated figment. That doesn't mean they don't actually say it. I just
> haven't seen proof yet.
To what degree are we ever privy to these kinds of high-level policy developments. In many of his books, Chomsky cites NSC 68 as the blueprint for the Cold War. To what degree were the concepts elucidated in it common knowledge in 1950? It is a genuine question; I honestly don't know.
Personally, I would not expect a "smoking gun" memo to appear for the foreseeable future, but maybe historians will find documentary evidence in thirty years or whatever when the files are declassified (if of course they are not buried in GW's "library"). I suspect that leaks like the Downing Street Memo are the exception to the the rule.
--
Colin Brace
Amsterdam