Pynchonoid politics in the shadows of PNAC

[pynchonoid]

Merry Band,

I just wanted to share a bit of an email from a friend
who is slowing making his way through GR for the first
time. I know that some of the connections he's making
will interest some of you, and if not, please accept
my sincere apologies in advance.

Enjoy!

-Doug

P.S.  Keith, you go girl!  You're slinging that
obfuscating-troll mud with the big boys now, aren't
you! What a joy it has been to watch you blossom over
the past few years! 

OK, here goes...

"[...] Unfortunately, I have neglected 
reading GR in the last couple of weeks even though it
is just what I need to 
read to keep my philosophical and historical
perspective. All of this centers 
around Zalmay Khalilzad and the utterly Pynchonoid,
dirty politics lurking in 
the shadows of the PNAC.
[...] ZK, Richard Perle, Paul Wolfowitz and Ahmed
Chalabi, the 
financial trickster now leading the Iraqi National
Congress, were all 
doctoral students at the same time in the 1970s at the
University of Chicago under the legendary RAND
political strategist, Alfred Wohlstetter. He was one 
of the leading lights at RAND in the 1950s along with
Herman Kahn and Daniel 
Ellsberg.  They spent much time thinking about nuclear
war as part of game 
theory.  
	RAND originated in WW II Research ANd Development
(hence RAND) for the Army 
Air Force and organized into a separate corporate
entity right after the end 
of WW II.  I found Smithsonian webpages of outlines of
interviews of major 
RAND scientists as part of the National Air and Space
Museum history project.  
Some of the first work these scientists for RAND
included a review of Werner 
von Braun's work at Peenemuende and the work of Robert
Goddard at the 
Wright-Patterson Air Force base where so many of the
Nazi rocket scientists 
arrived.  In 1948 RAND initiated its Project Air Force
for formulating 
geopolitical military strategy which would also
include strategy and doctrine 
on nuclear warfare.  So Wohlstetter worked within this
context all through 
the 1950s, leaving RAND around 1960 to teach at
Berkeley and Stanford.  He 
even spent 1963 at the Stanford Research Institute
before going to the U of C 
in 1964.  ([...]  By 
1963 SRI was also doing its research on LSD.) 

	Zalmay Khalilzad served as Director of the Strategy
and Doctrine for Project 
Air Force in the 1990s, publishing books and articles
all through the 1990s. 
After he graduated from U of C in 1979, doing his
dissertation on nuclear 
power in Iran, he taught at Columbia University when
he became part of 
Zbigniew Brzezinski's circle.  He worked for the
Department of State from 
1985-89 as a special advisor on both the Iran-Iraq war
and the guerilla war 
against the Soviets in Afghanistan.  KZ was one of the
strategists who argued 
for giving the Stinger anti-aircraft missles to the
Afghan mujehadeen.  He 
was also the strategist who argued that the US should
begin to favor Iran 
over Iraq once the war ended in 1988.  This was also
the time period when the 
Pakistani intelligence service ISI trained the
mujehadeen for the CIA and 
promoted Hekmatyar as its favorite, even though the
CIA knew that Hekmatyar 
was rabidly anti-American, the CIA gave him
$600,000,000.  Hekmatyar became 
the most powerful warlord and heroin dealer in
Afghanistan.  He was also a 
dedicated follower of Ossama bin Laden. [...] "



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