Is the US Institute Of Peace a new version of Project For A New American Century?

[zulchzulu]

http://www.usip.org/isg/members.html

The Iraq Study Group (ISG) released the wilted suggestions for Bush to ignore. Authored by the US Institute Of Peace, one might think that the organization sounds like an up and coming group following its title.

Yet, former US Institute Of Peace members Dick Cheney, Frank Carlucci, Caspar Weinberger, Stephen Hadley were also signatories with the now-defunct Project For A New American Century. This is the same organization that wanted to have this Iraq war/occupation occur.

If you drill down on the site, you find a PDF where the ISG "consulted" with these people and made their findings. There are others as well, but these names rang alarm bells for me. Just how much influence they had in the report is worth investigating.

Here's the list:
George W. Bush - President
Richard B. Cheney - Vice President
Condoleezza Rice - Secretary of State
Donald H. Rumsfeld - Secretary of Defense
Stephen J. Hadley - National Security Advisor
Joshua B. Bolten - White House Chief of Staff
Zalmay Khalilzad - U.S. Ambassador to Iraq
Henry Kissinger - former United States Secretary of State
Colin Powell - former United States Secretary of State
George P. Schultz - former United States Secretary of State
William Kristol - The Weekly Standard
Guy Laboa - Kellogg, Brown & Root
George Will - The Washington Post

As some have suggested, the ISG is mere window dressing. And as their point 13 on their fact sheet says:

"The ISG will provide recommendations that the Bush administration and Congress can use to consider the future direction of U.S. policy regarding Iraq. Actual policy decisions, of course, can only be made by the administration and Congress."

Watch the press conference:
http://www.usip.org/isg/isg_press_conf.mov

More:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iraq_Study_Group_Report
http://rightweb.irc-online.org/charts/pnac-chart.php

[muriel_volestrangler]

1. Now controlled by Democrats

(or at least it will be when the next Congress starts):

The United States Institute of Peace is an independent, nonpartisan, national institution established and funded by Congress.
...
USIP President Richard Solomon addresses guests at the Institute's 20th anniversary reception. USIP celebrated its anniversary on March 16, 2005, by saluting former members of Congress for their roles in creating and supporting USIP.

http://www.usip.org/aboutus/

So, no, not really. It's older than the PNAC, was established when the House was in Democratic hands (though the Republicans had the Senate), and now will be under Democratic control, if there's any partisanship.

[Printer70]

2. Great find

This is insane and troubling. You are absolutely right that this is a pseudo-neocon operation. I looked up the bios on their "experts" in the Middle East, and most were Israel's advocates; of the few Muslims they had on the panel, one had led a group that condemned Arab governments. In contrast, the Israeli supporters included a former member of the IDF, a member of the Marine Corps, etc. Just given the constituency of their members, I can see why peace never transpires. This exactly the kind of group that can give the imprimatur of support to concessions requested in the Middle East that just happen to be tougher on the Palestinians than Israel.

[Printer70]

3. Food for Thought

* The United States Institute of Peace was signed into law in 1984 by President Ronald Reagan.

* "The USIP board of directors is a who's who of rightwing academia and government which challenges the institute's credentials as a nonpartisan and nonideological organization. " (http://rightweb.irc-online.org/groupwatch/usip.php)

* "While the Institute is prohibited from taking an active part in policymaking or implementation, there is a clear mandate for it to take direction from the executive branch of government and to promote and inform Congress and other public officials of desired approaches and solutions compatible with the foreign policy goals of the administration." ()

* "The conservative bias of USIP carries over to its working groups, conferences and public workshops. Of 15 presenters at a working group conference on the Definitions and Assumptions of Deterrence, 13 were from government agencies, right-leaning institutions, or USIP. Represented were: the American Enterprise Institute; Center for National Security Studies at Los Alamos Labs; Center for Strategic and International Studies; McDonnell Douglas Corporation; RAND Corporation; U.S. Arms Control and Disarmament Agency; National Institute for Public Policy; Legal Adviser to the counsel to the President of the United States; and Consultant-Adviser to the Secretary of Defense."
--

It's one thing to name an organization that advocates peace. Let's not forget that the Iraq Study Group- a panel the USIP funded- did not request US troop presence to leave Iraq. They said that the US forces COULD start leaving 1Q 2008. So much for peace.

[zulchzulu]

5. Thanks for pushing on

I didn't check when the Orwellian "United States Institute of Peace" started...figures that Reagan started it... other good points as well...

Perhaps Keith O. might want to do a little story on this.

[Clarkie1]

4. The board of directors is appointed by the President and confirmed by the Senate.

"By law, the United States Institute of Peace is governed by a bipartisan Board of Directors. The board is composed of twelve members from outside federal service appointed by the President of the United States and confirmed by the Senate, and four ex-officio members: the secretary of state (who may designate another Senate-confirmed State Department official), the secretary of defense (who may designate another Senate-confirmed Defense Department official), the president of the National Defense University (who may designate the vice president of the National Defense University), and the president of the Institute (nonvoting). The board is prohibited by law from having more than eight voting members of the same political party."

http://www.usip.org/aboutus/board.html

Although it is bipartisan, it obviously gets flavored by whatever political party is in power in the executive and/or legislative branch.

That being said, the ISG report was obviously not written by G.W. Bush. In my opinion, the Congress should endorse the recommendations of the report. I can think of no better way to put more political pressure on the President right now than to use the poltical capital opponents of the current policy have gained from this report. If Democrats use this bi-partisan report to pound the administration, the administration will have a much harder time arguing against what Democrats are saying.

Democrats who want a set timeline in stone need to acknowledge the political reality that it is not going to happen with this administration. However, it is possible to use this report and by endorsing it put real pressure on the administration to change policy and potentially create a better outcome of the situation.

Politics is the art of the possible, not the impossible.

[zulchzulu]

6. It looks like PNAC is a spin-off of USIP with many of the same players

I guess I shouldn't be surprised.

Since USIP was started in the Reagan Administration and has many of that administration's members as its members, the ideologies are about the same as PNAC's, sans obviously saying that preemptive war is a version of "peace".

War is peace, as Orwell did say.