~~During the 1980s, the new Soviet leader, Mikhail Gorbachev, promoted the concepts of Glasnost and Perestroika exhibiting a spirit of openness and cooperation. The United States seemed naively to buy this new Soviet approach by entering into the Soviet-American Exchange Agreement in 1985, whereby Soviet educators would help to write some curricula for American schools, among other education initiatives. This appeared to be a mistake born of incompetence, because in 1931 Soviet theoretician Dimitri Manuilsky, addressing the Comintern in Moscow, revealed: "One day we shall start to spread the most theatrical peace movement the world has ever seen. The capitalist countries, stupid and decadent...will fall into the trap offered by the possibility of making new friends....Our day will come in 30 to 40 years or so....The bourgeoisie must be lulled into a feeling of security."However, this wasn't really incompetence, but rather part of the Power Elite's (PE's) plan for a synthesis of capitalism and communism into a world socialist government. Relevant to this, Ford Foundation president H. Rowan Gaither in 1952 told Congressional Reece Committee research director Norman Dodd that "Of course, you know that we at the executive level here were, at one time or another, active in either the OSS, the State Department, or the European Economic Administration. During those times, and without exception, we operated under directives issued by the White House. We are continuing to be guided by just such directives....The substance (of these directives) was to the effect that we should make every effort to so alter life in the United States as to make possible a comfortable merger with the Soviet Union."In 1988, George H. W. Bush was elected president, and with his success in the 1991 Gulf War against Iraq's Saddam Hussein seemed headed for re-election in 1992. However, in what seemed to be an incompetent move, he went back on his "no new taxes" pledge and lost to Bill Clinton. Assuring Bush's loss, Ross Perot entered the presidential race, as Teddy Roosevelt did in 1912, and split the "conservative" vote---another example of Planned Incompetence (PI)? What happened was the PE needed the Democrat Clinton as president to persuade enough Demoicrats in Congress to pass NAFTA and GATT as part of the PE's ultimate plan for a global economy facilitating a world government.In the April 1974 edition of FOREIGN AFFAIRS, Rhodes scholar Richard Gardner had written that "an end run around national sovereignty, eroding it piece by piece, will accomplish much more than the old-fashioned frontal assault," and he then explained how GATT would help move nations toward "surrender of sovereignty" and "world government." President Clinton made Gardner an ambassador, and on June 22, 1993 wrote to the World Federalist Association (WFA), noting their past president Norman Cousins had "worked for world peace and world government," and he signed the letter, "Best wishes...for future success." NAFTA and GATT passed under President Clinton even though a large majority of the American people opposed them, and the great majority of the decisions of the World Trade Organization (part of GATT) have gone against the U.S. More and more American jobs also started going overseas.In 2001, George W. Bush succeeded Bill Clinton as president and, in an occurrence of seeming incompetence, failed to prevent the terrorist attack of September 11, 2001. The government was well aware of Project Bojinka (a plan to hijack airliners and crash them into the World Trade Center, etc.), and on August 6, 2001, President Bush received a memo saying Al Qaeda leader Osama bin Ladin was determined to strike inside the U.S. Despite this warning, President Bush failed to have placed on standby alert at any of New York City's forts an Apache Longbow helicopter, which easily could have prevented the hijacked airliners from striking the World Trade Center. The result of this seeming "incompetence" was that the American people, according to the results of an ABC/WASHINGTON POST poll the afternoon of September 11, 2001, suddenly became willing to sacrifice some of their freedoms for security (as desired by the PE), thus accepting the Patriot Act and Homeland Security Act.~~Two years later, President Bush in another move of apparent incompetence attacked Iraq in 2003 over the issue of Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD). Planning for providing security from crime, for electricity, etc., for civilian Iraqis was practically non-existent. But was this another example of PI, as the attendant turmoil caused the Iraqis to request American military forces to remain there and to grant the United States the largest Embassy in the region (which then became a high level surveillance post between Iran and its ally Syria)?