"All they have to do is repeat the same lie often enough and most people in the US will believe them."

I'm sympathetic to that Carol. I thought the same thing about some of what Clinton said. Turned out to be true, enough people believed him.

On the other hand it's a whole lot easier to see that the Bush Administration really believed there were WMDs. Their every action is consistent with being stunned to discover they weren't there, even the story that they must have been snuck over to Syria. Then too, there's evidence that Saddam himself got taken in about the progress of his own programs, so it's shouldn't be that surprising we were as well. That should at least create reasonable doubt as to whether the Administration lied about the existance of the WMDs. The "big lie" apporach would have produced at least plausible evidence they existed and that they had been dealt with. That's my point. The absense of a that easy to create big lie is actually in the Administration's favor.

As to the Project for a New American Century, I don't give it much credence and never did. Anyone familiar with a realistic asssessment of the US's military assets would know that it couldn't happen. We couldn't have done it when our military forces were much larger during the Reagan Administration; after the cuts Clinton made it's pure fantasy. That's the simple reason Rumsfeld wanted a small army to invade Iraq -- he didn't want to reveal that we couldn't field any more effective combat forces. We're out, everything significant we have is in Iraq. Our advantages in technology only go so far and while we could hope to bluff some nations, we couldn't invade Syria (that's the next country on the list, right?) right now if we had to.

That's just the military picture, of course, the political picture is even more clear. I suppose you've noticed no one left or right wants to invade Syria? No democracy, especially not the US, would ever tolerate spending the kind of blood and money it would take to achieve any new world order. It ain't gonna happen and no experienced, pragmatic politician would have ever believed it would. (Say what you will about Bush, he is surrounded by experienced, pragmatic politicians.)

On the whole I have to compare the Project for a New American Century with the most extreme environmental policies espoused by the radical left. Neither is politically, economically or technically achieveable. Not in this life time, anyway.