PNAC and follow the money (these threads and info tie it together)

[ProSense]

PNAC and the Carlyle Group: MUST see TV
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=364&topic_id=203454&mesg_id=203454

1980-1989 Armed uprisings of Mujaheddin groups against Soviets and Soviet backed government. US supports Mujaheddin with $ and weapons via Pakistan ISI (Interservices Intelligence Agency). Osama Bin Laden and other foreign militants enter Afghanistan and fight alongside Mujaheddin.
Jason Burke, "The Making of the World's Most Wanted Man"

http://www.library.umass.edu/sept11/afghanistan.html

The American Media 101 (The media as GOP shill)
Or why the media is so damn complicit in furthering the Republican agenda.

The media serves as a shill for the group more likely to protect its corporate interests, Republicans. The fact is the levels of media ownership run so far and deep into the financial community it's hard for the average person to see, and so easy for the media to deny that these connections have any impact on its reporting

Here is and excellent ownership chart:

snip...

Now an example of how much deeper it goes beyond AOL/Time Warner connection to Citigroup (pg. 9). What this chart doesn’t show is the link to Kingdom Holding Company:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=132&topic_id=2360972&mesg_id=2360972

"All Roads Lead To PNAC"
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=132&topic_id=2381676&mesg_id=2381676
(Also, first post William Kristol's bio)

Follow the Money
How John Kerry busted the terrorists' favorite bank.
By David Sirota and Jonathan Baskin

Two decades ago, the Bank of Credit and Commerce International (BCCI) was a highly respected financial titan. In 1987, when its subsidiary helped finance a deal involving Texas oilman George W. Bush, the bank appeared to be a reputable institution, with attractive branch offices, a traveler's check business, and a solid reputation for financing international trade. It had high-powered allies in Washington and boasted relationships with respected figures around the world.

All that changed in early 1988, when John Kerry, then a young senator from Massachusetts, decided to probe the finances of Latin American drug cartels. Over the next three years, Kerry fought against intense opposition from vested interests at home and abroad, from senior members of his own party; and from the Reagan and Bush administrations, none of whom were eager to see him succeed.

By the end, Kerry had helped dismantle a massive criminal enterprise and exposed the infrastructure of BCCI and its affiliated institutions, a web that law enforcement officials today acknowledge would become a model for international terrorist financing. As Kerry's investigation revealed in the late 1980s and early 1990s, BCCI was interested in more than just enriching its clients--it had a fundamentally anti-Western mission. Among the stated goals of its Pakistani founder were to "fight the evil influence of the West," and finance Muslim terrorist organizations. In retrospect, Kerry's investigation had uncovered an institution at the fulcrum of America's first great post-Cold War security challenge.



snip...

Make no mistake about it, BCCI would have been a player. A decade after Kerry helped shut the bank down, the CIA discovered Osama bin Laden was among those with accounts at the bank. A French intelligence report obtained by The Washington Post in 2002 identified dozens of companies and individuals who were involved with BCCI and were found to be dealing with bin Laden after the bank collapsed, and that the financial network operated by bin Laden today "is similar to the network put in place in the 1980s by BCCI." As one senior U.S. investigator said in 2002, "BCCI was the mother and father of terrorist financing operations."

Second, the BCCI affair showed Kerry to be a politician driven by a sense of mission, rather than expediency--even when it meant ruffling feathers. Perhaps Sen. Hank Brown, the ranking Republican on Kerry's subcommittee, put it best. "John Kerry was willing to spearhead this difficult investigation," Brown said. "Because many important members of his own party were involved in this scandal, it was a distasteful subject for other committee and subcommittee chairmen to investigate. They did not. John Kerry did."


http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/features/2004/0409.sirota.html