WHOSE SWINE IS IT, ANYWAY?

Everyone knows that real news is basically not reported on television anymore, except for the occassional (metaphorical, I hope) ejaculation from Anderson Cooper, and various and sundry other emissions (which may or may not include ejaculations) from other media sources.

Much has been said that "the fake news" (i.e. "The Daily Show With Jon Stewart," "The Colbert Report") IS now our real news. So be it. "Real" news involves getting at the who, how, when, where and why - about questions of, as a certain character on Star Trek once said, passions and motivations, not about some anorexic Fox News anchor sitting at a news-like-looking desk looking like Bill O'Reilly just phone-sex fucked her chichlets out.

And so, I give you the following transcript of an interview that Steve Colbert had with Bill "The Bedwetter" Kristol last night. It's as real as the right's talking points are regurgitated, and as real as the left's uninsightful bluster is not a story:

COLBERT: Speaking of thinking alike, you were a member, or are a member of the Project for a New American Century, correct?
KRISTOL: I am
COLBERT: Were or am?
KRISTOL: Were and am.
COLBERT: How’s that Project coming?
KRISTOL: Well it’s…
COLBERT: How’s the New American Century? Looks good to me, right?
KRISTOL: I think it, I…I’m speechless.
COLBERT: Really?
KRISTOL: Yeah, we’ve sort of, the Project for a New American Century, we’re one of the few people…
COLBERT: Come on, it’s a terrific New American Century, right?
KRISTOL: Well, I think we’re doing ok.
COLBERT: You, Rummy, Wolfowitz, Cheney, Pearle, Feith, all you guys, right?
KRISTOL: Well, we fought back after 9/11 and I’m proud of what we’ve done in Afghanistan and in Iraq, yes.
COLBERT: Well, this is pre-9/11, you guys had the Project in the 90s?
KRISTOL: Absolutely, and we thought we should have been fighting back more in the 90s.
COLBERT: Right, we should have invaded Iraq, you know, then you said.
KRISTOL: We should have, actually.
COLBERT: Exactly.
KRISTOL: If we had finished the job in 1991 it would have been a lot easier.
COLBERT: A lot of people are bailing on this whole Iraq war idea. But you’re not, right?
KRISTOL: Correct.
COLBERT: You’re still onboard?
KRISTOL: I am onboard.
COLBERT: The grand experiment?
KRISTOL: No, it’s not a grand experiment.
COLBERT: It’s not? It’s a little experiment?
KRISTOL: No, it’s an unfortunate necessity that you cannot allow dictators to kill their own people and you cannot allow dictators to threaten their neighbors.
COLBERT: Which dictator do we take down next?
KRISTOL: Well, I wish we could take down more, actually. You know, it’d be nice to…
COLBERT: Wait a second, we cannot allow dictators to kill their own people. That’s a very simple statement sir, which I support wholeheartedly. Back it up!
KRISTOL: I’m with you.
COLBERT: Who do we go after next? Iran? Come on!
KRISTOL: I think we may have to take military action against…
COLBERT: Let’s get some boots on the ground, sir!
KRISTOL: I wish…we may have to do that. We have to do that in the Sudan.
COLBERT: Is the military option on the table in Iran?
KRISTOL: Absolutely, absolutely. And in Sudan.
COLBERT: Ok. How about the nuclear option in Iran?
KRISTOL: No, no.
COLBERT: Come on!
KRISTOL: No, I differ with you on this.
COLBERT: The President says…
KRISTOL: You’re a tougher guy than I am on this.
COLBERT: I’m a neo-neocon. You guys aren’t tough for me.
KRISTOL: I’m an anti-nuke neocon and you’re a pro-nuke neocon.

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Listening to Kristol's arguments makes one see how forced the whole "logic" behind them is. PNAC, which was formed in 1997 (he is a charter member - as are quite a few other Jews who think being what's good for the Rapture is what's good for the Jews - er - he's "Pro-Israel"), is a group of (what was at the time) a group of nut job conservative think-tank types who were either Reagan-era discards or Bush Sr. discards (that is, either discarded by these two men, or discarded from the federal government when Clinton became President).

So, when these men, including the estimable John Bolton, George Shultz, Caspar Weinberger (dead, thankfully), Douglas Feith, Richard Perle, Donald Rumsfeld, John Podhoretz, and any other number of would-be distinguished conservative basket cases realized that they didn't have a real job (the ones that were actually kicked out of one, that is), they formed this group, Project for the New American Century. The group outlined its goal, explained in the group's 80-or-so page founding document, which I could link to, but won't, on the off-chance that you have just eaten, will be eating, or might be eating in the next month. The document, essentially, said this: after the Cold War, America faces new military challenges (read: we have no major enemy, so we must make one up). We must preserve our military dominance over other nations (read: premeptively invade other nations that cough at us just to show them that we are superior to them). To do this, we must buy oodles and oodles of sure-to-be obsolete military equipment - naval carriers, jets, missiles, you name it (after all, Clinton cut defense funding), to replace the ones that were now obsolete (you know, the ones under which we won the Gulf War, which the PNACers said was a mistake because we didn't end that war by toppling Saddam). In the document, the PNACers explicitly renounced intervening in "sissy multilateral conflicts" wherein we could not demonstrate our military prowess by air, land and sea (read: have as many troops killed as possible) - such as Bosnia. Nowhere in the document was terrorism mentioned - except for some vague mention of it in the context of money laundering, I think. The PNACers concluded, near the end of the document, though, since they were, of course, visionaries, that for their brilliant proposals to be implemented, it would take a "transformative event - something equivalent to Pearl Harbor."

Every time I think of this project, I think of Project: Genesis, the concept/storyline that was featured so prominently in the second through fourth Star Trek feature films. The people who created the latter, unlike those who came up with PNAC, had benevolent intentions: Project Genesis (PE) was a four-phase scientific experiment, with the ultimate phase/goal being the creation of life on a lifeless planet - terraforming, if you will. The way the project was supposed to work was this: the project was first supposed to be tested (and indeed was tested) on a dead life form - a moon-type body. Tunnels were dug deep underground into the interior of this body. The experiments - which involved "the rearrangement of matter at the subatomic level" were successful through phase 2. Phase 3 involved conducting these experiments on a greater portion of the dead planet's surface - i.e. replication. Finally, phase four was to be the actual creation, as it were - 'Life from lifenessless" - the transformation of a lifeless planet into one replete with flora, fauna, water, an atmosphere, and so on, by triggering a device known as the "genesis device," which would trigger the "rearrangement of matter at the subatomic level" on a planetary scale" - think of it as an ordered big bang.

The device was indeed detonated, but not when it was supposed to have been. The result: The Genesis Planet - a seeming success (the device, because it was not triggered in proximity to a selected planet, created a planet out of whole cloth - one nonetheless with flora, fauna, water, etc.). It is revealed, midway through movie 3, though, that one of the Genesis creators, as a way of speeding up the "rearrangement" process that was to happen once the triggering was to take place, inserted something into the device known as "protomatter" - an unstable compound that resulted in the Genesis planet's self-destruction. Bad. Shouldn't have messed with Mother Nature. God is supreme. Man is not.

The Genesis creators share much in common with the PNACers - wanting to remake the world in their image; an inability to think their ideas out. As Jeff Goldblum said in Jurassic Park, "Your scientists [insert here PNAC and the Genesis creators and other fools throughout history] were so preoccupied with whether or not they could, they never stopped to think about whether they should."