The following is the result of research done on the internet, reading
periodicals and books, viewing C-SPAN etc. which began one year prior to the
invasion of Iraq. In doing the research it
became apparently clear that a group of individuals within and outside of the
U.S. government were influencing the direction of our foreign policy not to our
benefit but for the benefit of a foreign country. Some allegedly profited from the war. Many of these individuals had
dual
loyalties, one to the U.S.(weak) and the other to a
foreign nation (strong).
The irony of it all is that these
individuals have not been brought to account for their complicity in taking us
to war. Instead, they have either resigned from their government positions (Douglas
Feith , Richard
Perle) or been appointed to a new job such as the head of the World
Bank(Paul
Wolfowitz). Some have taken on a low profile while others, now
that the U.S. pre-emptive invasion of Iraq has met with insurmountable
obstacles, are still appearing on TV
talk shows, C-SPAN, writing Op-Ed pieces etc. trying to justify
their positions on the invasion of Iraq and casting
the blame for the failure on our military leaders. They cannot save
their discredited and bloodstained ideology; they can only try saving certain
individuals(Lewis
Scooter Libby) from spending a good deal of time behind
bars where they belong. If they succeed then justice will not have been
served.
As one radio talk show host stated that these neocons should be held liable for their mistakes similar to a surgeon who recommends an operation and due to his incompetence makes a mistake and the patient either dies or is crippled for life. These neocons should be tried for dereliction of duty, malfeasance in office and manslaughter in the second degree .
Read the following and decide for yourself if what I have found does or does not support my thesis.The
genesis of the war on Iraq
Or
How the
neocons hijacked the “war on terror”
Last
update 10 / 30 / 07
The war against Iraq has polarized Americans before the first shot was
fired. And as the war was brought home with nonstop frontline images, the lines
between pro- and anti-war have solidified, especially as U.S. and coalition
forces began to take casualties in the “post war insurrection”.
Polls show the
sharpest dividing line between those who support U.S. policy in Iraq and those
who oppose it is between Republicans and Democrats. The war in Iraq has
divided America like nothing since Vietnam, and that the hate we once
reserved for terrorists we are now spewing at one
another.
We have spent a
fortune attacking a country that had done us no harm, killing tens of
thousands of its people and giving the United States a black eye as an aggressor
that starts wars on the basis of lies and disinformation. Two years (3/20/2003) after the invasion of Iraq, discontent with
America and its policies has intensified rather than
diminished.
In an article in USA
Today James Webb, a
Marine platoon and company commander in Vietnam whom Ronald Reagan named as his
secretary of the Navy wrote
–“ Bush arguably has committed the greatest strategic blunder in modern
memory. To put it bluntly, he attacked the wrong target. While he boasts of
removing Saddam Hussein from power, he did far more than that. He decapitated
the government of a country that was not directly threatening the United States
and, in so doing, bogged down a huge percentage of our military in a region that
never has known peace.”
And with criticism mounting as the conflict became
more bloody, President Bush has found himself defending, time and again, on how the
war on terror led to Baghdad.
The question is often raised as to-
Q: What role should U.S.
citizens play?
A: It's really essential
that Americans take an
interest in learning about how this war began. That's really their
citizenship duty; otherwise they may see their sons and daughters coming home in
pine boxes. At the end of the day, though, it's the November elections that will
determine the course of the war.
Hopefully those of you who
take the time to read this web page will gain some insight as to who, what and
why led this nation to war.
In tracing
the roots of America's war in Iraq
I decided to do some research on the Internet to try to learn
the truth as to why and how president Bush and his administration arrived at
making the decision to invade Iraq. I focused on a very influential group of
individuals who were brought in to the administration by V.P. Dick Cheney who
are often referred to as neoconservatives
or “neocons”. They said that the invasion would be a “cakewalk”
and the Iraqis would
greet our troops with flowers. How could such a small group of individuals
wield so much power in influencing U.S. foreign policy? Individuals, many of
whom, had as one of
their prime reasons for the invasion, which was to protect the ally
Israel, and not because Iraq was a threat to the U.S.
18. The
wars’ aftermath. Civil War or Civil Society?
19. Neocon
whitewash?
20. The Generals
Speak Out
21. Where Is the
Exit Strategy?
22. The truth is
finally being told. (Reporters with gullions!)
23. The "Israel Lobby" and its influence on U.S. foreign
policy vis-à-vis Israel
24. Post-war
Iraq.
25. Postscript
.
26. The Real Iraq We Knew
.
27. Last Goodbye: US Soldiers from Iraq War
.
http://www.yale.edu/lawweb/avalon/tonkin-g.htm
http://www.luminet.net/~tgort/tonkin.htm
http://www.fair.org/media-beat/940727.html
The 1991
Gulf war
U.S. Ambassador to Iraq April
Glaspie’s response to Saddam Hussein
It is
possible to ague, however (and many have done so), that Glaspie's statements
that "We have no opinion on your Arab - Arab conflicts" and that "the Kuwait
issue is not associated with America" were interpreted by Saddam as giving tacit
approval of his annexation of Kuwait. Since it is not now possible to know what
was in Saddam's mind, this matter cannot be resolved. Saddam was a dictator who
had never visited a western country, and who lived a in a world where disputes
were routinely resolved by force. It is therefore quite possible that he wrongly
interpreted Glaspie's remarks.
It seems unlikely that
Saddam would have invaded Kuwait had he been given an explicit warning that such
an invasion would be met with force by the United States, but Glaspie can only
be criticised for not giving such a warning if it can be established that she
knew that Saddam was planning an invasion. There is nothing in the transcripts
to suggest this.
The most that can be
argued is that, given the Iraqi troop build-up in the Kuwait border area, she
should have been instructed by the State Department to give Saddam an explicit
warning. Glaspie later testified that she had given Saddam such a
warning, but no mention of this appears in the published transcripts. This is
hardly surprising since these transcripts were released to further Iraq's ends.
Edward Mortimer wrote
in the New York Review of Books in September 1991: "It seems [likely]
that Saddam Hussein went ahead with the invasion because he believed the US
would not react with anything more than verbal condemnation. That was an
inference he could well have drawn from his meeting with US Ambassador April
Glaspie on July 25, and from statements by State Department officials in
Washington at the same time publicly disavowing any US security commitments to
Kuwait."
Iraq,
Iran, and September 11: A Chronology
by Jacob G.
Hornberger, December 19,
2002
Glaspie had given Saddam
a green light
The Iraqi Government still insists that April Glaspie met with Saddam Hussein in 1990 before his invasion of Kuwait. Glaspie "...was informed of Iraq's plans and gave her de facto approval." America and April Glaspie flatly deny this accusation: "Obviously, I didn't think, and nobody else did, that the Iraqis were going to take all of Kuwait. -- Former Ambassador April Glaspie, in response to accusations that the U.S. invited Saddam Hussein to take Kuwait" 4
In a May 27, 1999 Christian Science Monitor article, Carleton Cole writes, "...from a translation of Iraq's transcript of the meeting, released that September, press and pundits concluded that Ms. Glaspie had (in effect) given Saddam a green light to invade."
"We have no opinion on your Arab-Arab conflicts," the transcript reports Glaspie saying, "...such as your dispute with Kuwait. Secretary [of State James] Baker has directed me to emphasize the instruction...that Kuwait is not associated with America."
U.S. Ambassador Glaspie - We have no opinion on your Arab - Arab conflicts, such as your dispute with Kuwait. Secretary (of State James) Baker has directed me to emphasize the instruction, first given to Iraq in the 1960's, that the Kuwait issue is not associated with America. (Saddam smiles)
On August 2, 1990 four days later, Saddam's massed troops invade and occupy Kuwait. _____
http://www..whatreallyhappened.com/ARTICLE5/april.html
In war, some facts
less factual
Some US assertions from the last war on Iraq still appear dubious.
| Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor
September 06,
2002
More recently, in the fall of
1990, members of Congress and the American public were swayed by the tearful
testimony of a 15-year-old Kuwaiti girl, known only as
Nayirah.
In the girl's testimony
before a congressional caucus, well-documented in MacArthur's book "Second
Front" and elsewhere, she described how, as a volunteer in a Kuwait maternity
ward, she had seen Iraqi troops storm her hospital, steal the incubators, and
leave 312 babies "on the cold floor to die."
Seven US Senators later
referred to the story during debate; the motion for war passed by just five
votes In
the weeks after Nayirah spoke, President Bush senior invoked the incident five
times, saying that such "ghastly atrocities" were like "Hitler
revisited."
But just weeks before the US
bombing campaign began in January, a few press reports began to raise questions
about the validity of the incubator tale.
Later, it was learned that
Nayirah was in fact the daughter of the Kuwaiti ambassador to Washington and had
no connection to the Kuwait hospital.
She had been coached – along
with the handful of others who would "corroborate" the story – by senior
executives of Hill and Knowlton in Washington, the biggest global PR firm at the
time, which had a contract worth more than $10 million with the Kuwaitis to make
the case for war.
"We didn't know it wasn't
true at the time," Brent Scowcroft, Bush's national security adviser, said of
the incubator story in a 1995 interview with the London-based Guardian
newspaper. He acknowledged "it was useful in mobilizing public
opinion."
How the public relations industry sold
the Gulf War to the U.S. -- The mother of all
clients
US Congressman Jimmy Hayes of Louisiana -- a conservative Democrat who supported the Gulf War -- later estimated that the government of Kuwait funded as many as 20 PR, law and lobby firms in its campaign to mobilize US opinion and force against Hussein.4 Participating firms included the Rendon Group, which received a retainer of $100,000 per month for media work, and Neill & Co., which received $50,000 per month for lobbying Congress.
Hill & Knowlton (H&K), then the world's
largest PR firm, served as mastermind for the Kuwaiti campaign. It's activities
alone would have constituted the largest foreign-funded campaign ever aimed at
manipulating American public opinion. By law, the Foreign Agents Registration
Act should have exposed this propaganda campaign to the American people, but the
Justice Department chose not to enforce it. Nine days after Saddam's army
marched into Kuwait, the Emir's government agreed to fund a contract under which
Hill & Knowlton would represent "Citizens for a Free Kuwait" (CFK) a classic
PR front group designed to hide the real role of the Kuwaiti government and its
collusion with the Bush administration. Over the next six months, the Kuwaiti
government channeled $11.9 million dollars to Citizens for a Free Kuwait, whose
only other funding totalled $17,862 from 78 individuals. Virtually all of CFK's
budget -- $10.8 million -- went to Hill & Knowlton in the form of
fees.6
http://www.counterpunch.org/tristam1016.html
October 16,
2002
It's been about 40 years since a president's speeches didn't sound like infomercials. So George W. Bush's prime time sales pitch last week on slapping a "New Ownership" sign on Iraq was not surprising for sweating the manipulative bullets of sales pitches -- exaggerations, inflated sincerity, half-truths, outright lies. This isn't a Bush family specialty. Bill Clinton, Ronald Reagan, Richard Nixon and Lyndon Johnson were terrific salesmen, each more or less made for television's blind spot for hucksters. But for sheer breadth of deception and implications to thousands of human lives, the Bush performance for a resolution authorizing Gulf War II can only be compared with Johnson's fabrication 38 years ago that uselessly condemned 57,000 Americans and more than a million Vietnamese -- the Gulf of Tonkin resolution.
The Iraq war resolution Congress approved with a mob-like majority last week is the Tonkin of our day.Like Bush with Iraq today, Johnson back then didn't have the facts to back up his demand for war on North Vietnam. So he invented them.
We are now faced with another administration urging another congressional resolution that will be used to authorize war. There will be many opportunities for "interpreting" alleged violations of agreements concerning disarmament inspections. And there will be many ways for the Bush administration to exaggerate, dramatize and publicize what may or may not be attempts to conceal weapons of mass destruction.
http://www.bsos.umd.edu/pgsd/people/staffpubs/Gar-Tonkin.htm
Former
Pentagon insider: 'When we lie about stuff,' people
perish
A former Pentagon insider
talks about Iraq propaganda
http://www.freelancestar.com/News/FLS/2004/042004/04092004/1324501
“But then the Sept. 11 attacks
occurred, and certain people saw a chance to turn a crisis into an opportunity.
Specifically, neoconservative ideologues inside the administration--Vice
President Dick Cheney, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, Deputy Secretary of
Defense Paul Wolfowitz, and others--could taste their dream of invading Iraq,
but the existing intelligence didn't lend much support for a Mesopotamian
adventure.
Enter the Pentagon's Office of
Special Plans. Conceived by Wolfowitz, the office grew out of the Near East
South Asia directorate's Iraq desk and was officially launched in the summer of
2002--just as the administration was readying its big sales pitch for
war.”
This
guy is a modern-day Hitler
The following is
an excerpt from Norman Solomon's new book, War
Made Easy: How
Presidents and Pundits Keep Spinning Us to Death, just published by John Wiley
& Sons.
Iraq II: The Comparison Fits Like an Old Shoe
When
the second Bush administration returned Saddam Hussein to the center stage of
U.S. foreign policy, it was time to reprise countless stories about his
evilness, while again eliding the cozy relationship that Hussein had long
enjoyed with Washington. (When I accompanied former U.N. assistant
secretary-general Denis Halliday to a private meeting in Baghdad with Iraqi
deputy prime minister Tariq Aziz in late January 2003, Aziz glanced at the
latest Time magazine, which Halliday had just given to him. Secretary of Defense
Donald Rumsfeld was on the cover. "Rumsfeld has become quite a warmonger," Aziz
said. "He did not seem so when he came and visited us in the 1980s.") The Iraqi
dictator had not ordered an attack on another country since 1990, and his
military capabilities had obviously diminished -- but comparing him to Hitler
fit like an old shoe.
One
of many politicians eager to keep putting it on was "moderate Republican"
Christopher Shays, who repeatedly invoked memories of the Third Reich to justify
an invasion of Iraq. Days before Congress passed the war resolution in October
2002, Shays went on MSNBC and used the Hitler analogy as part of a slick
repertoire about Saddam.
After
more than two decades of representing a San Francisco area district in Congress,
Tom Lantos was the ranking Democrat on the House International Relations
Committee by the time an invasion of Iraq was on the near horizon. He was not to
be outdone at conflating Baathist Iraq with the Third Reich, as though Saddam's
forces were somehow comparable to Germany's Wehrmacht. In early October 2002,
Lantos pulled out all the stops on Capitol Hill as he proclaimed: "Had Hitler's
regime been taken out in a timely fashion, the 51 million innocent people who
lost their lives during the Second World War would have been able to finish
their normal life cycles. Mr. Chairman, if we appease Saddam Hussein, we will
stand humiliated before both humanity and history."
(Iraq responsible for 9/11? Weapons of mass destruction. Neocons)
The real issue is how this administration manipulated the intelligence to make a case for war against Iraq and sold it to an ignorant public with the acquiescence of Congress. Senator Robert Byrd in his Senate remarks of Feb. 12, 2003 said
"To contemplate war is
to think about the most horrible of human experiences. On this February
day, as this nation stands at the brink of battle, every American on some level
must be contemplating the horrors of war.
Yet, this Chamber is, for the most
part, silent -- ominously, dreadfully silent. There is no debate, no
discussion, no attempt to lay out for the nation the pros and cons of this
particular war. There is nothing."
Iraq was not
responsible for 9/11. There were a number of individuals who would lead you to
believe that it was, such as Laurie
Mylroie, William Kristol and the rest of the so called
neoconservatives who were advising the president. These individuals set the
stage for invading Iraq by writing books and op ed pieces in newspapers, making
presentations on the subject at seminars sponsored by think tanks such as the
American Enterprise Institute.
As a C-SPAN junkie I
remember when Mylroie appeared on C-SPAN's Book Notes to talk about her book
Study of Revenge: Saddam Hussein's Unfinished War Against America, a
book published by AEI in 2000. At the time I did not give it much thought
but individuals such as Peter
Bergen who referred to her as the neocons favorite conspiracy theorist
was able to piece things together. Bergen wrote-
"Historians will be debating that question for years, but an important part of the reason has to do with someone the average American may well have never heard of: Laurie Mylroie. Mylroie has an impressive array of credentials that certify her as an expert on the Middle East, national security, and, above all, Iraq. She has held faculty positions at Harvard and the U.S. Naval War College and worked at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, as well as serving as an advisor on Iraq to the 1992 Clinton presidential campaign. During the 1980s, Mylroie was an apologist for Saddam's regime, but reversed her position upon his invasion of Kuwait in 1990, and, with the zeal of the academic spurned, became rabidly anti-Saddam. In the run up to the first Gulf War, Mylroie with New York Times reporter Judith Miller wrote Saddam Hussein and the Crisis in the Gulf, a well-reviewed bestseller translated into more than a dozen languages.
Until this point, there was nothing controversial about Mylroie's career. This would change with the bombing of the World Trade Center in 1993, the first act of international terrorism within the United States, which would launch Mylroie on a quixotic quest to prove that Saddam's regime was the most important source of terrorism directed against this country. She laid out her case in Study of Revenge: Saddam Hussein's Unfinished War Against America, a book published by AEI in 2000 which makes it clear that Mylroie and the neocon hawks worked hand in glove to push her theory that Iraq was behind the '93 Trade Center bombing. Its acknowledgements fulsomely thanked John Bolton and the staff of AEI for their assistance, while Richard Perle glowingly blurbed the book as "splendid and wholly convincing." I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, now Vice President Cheney's chief of staff, is thanked for his "generous and timely assistance." And it appears that Paul Wolfowitz himself was instrumental in the genesis of Study of Revenge: His then-wife is credited with having "fundamentally shaped the book," while of Wolfowitz, she says: "At critical times, he provided crucial support for a project that is inherently difficult." Wolfowitz having read the book became convinced that Saddam and Iraq were responsible for 9/11 and made the invasion his top priority.
Her book was followed by books by William Kristol and Robert Kagan. In the book Present Dangers Kristol and Kagan's basic argument is that the US needs to exercise world domination, here spun as "benevolent global hegemony" and that there are a number of external obstacles which stand in the way and must be dealt with. These are Iraq, Iran, North Korea, China, the Middle East peace process and an independent Europe.
The one distasteful aspect of the book is the attempt to wrap the entire endeavor in the cloak of "American morality", understood as protecting citizen's liberties. This is breathtaking stuff from accomplices in the most extensive attempt to incinerate the Constitution in recent history.
In the book The
War over Iraq
Kristol and Lawrence Kaplan, a senior editor at the New Republic,
cogently make the case for a U.S. invasion of Iraq.
Kristol is also Chairman of the Project for the New American Century, a non-profit think-tank established in 1997.
In it's Statement of Principles the PNAC raises the question "Does the United States have the resolve to shape a new century favorable to American principles and interests?" I'm of the opinion that in Kristol's mind he substitutes the word Israel for American.
One of the four consequences listed
in the S of P is " we need to strengthen our ties to democratic
allies and to challenge regimes hostile to our
interests and values". Again substitute Israel for democratic
allies and Iraq, Iran, Syria for regimes.
Another book is The
Threatening Storm by Kenneth Pollack. Pollack's chapter in which he justifies a U.S.
invasion of Iraq is highly flawed, for a very important reason. Having stated
convincingly why continued sanctions, and even strong inspections, would not be
enough to topple Saddam, and having made the case that he must be toppled before
he can truly menace the world, Pollack concludes that no course remained but a
U.S. invasion.
Philip Zelikow is of the type of whom it is customarily said: "He has impeccable establishment credentials". He served as executive director of the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States. Between 2001 and 2003 he served on the President's Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board (PFIAB), which reports directly to the president. Before his appointment to PFIAB he was part of the Bush transition team in January 2001. And in 1995 he co-authored a book with Condoleezza Rice.
It's recently been revealed that in 2002 he publicly stated that a prime motive for the upcoming invasion of Iraq was to eliminate a threat to Israel.
style="COLOR: black; mso-bidi-font-size: 9.0pt">"It's the threat against Israel". These were the words of Philip Zelikow given in 2002 when he was asked why the U.S. was planning on attacking Iraq. Zelikow suggested that one of the prime reasons for the invasion was to protect the ally Israel, and not because Iraq was a threat to the U.S.
There have been a number of
individuals who have sounded the alarm about the neocon cabal
that is influencing US foreign policy namely Robert
Novak, Pat Buchanan , Gen.
Anthony Zinni and former Illinois Congressman
Paul Findley unfortunately they are accused of being anti
Semitic due to their criticism of Israel policies in the Middle East and US
support of Israel.
In his article
“Have the Neocons Killed a Presidency?” Pat Buchanan writes the
following-
“Yet, the president has a grave problem, and it is this: Burrowed inside his foreign policy team are men guilty of exactly what Gore accuses Bush of, men who did exploit our fears to stampede us into a war they had plotted for years. Consider:
– In 1996, in a strategy paper
“A Clean Break: A New Strategy for Securing the Realm” was
crafted for Israel's
Bibi Netanyahu. Richard Perle,
Douglas Feith and David Wurmser urged him to "focus on removing Saddam
Hussein from power" as an "Israeli strategic objective." Perle,
Feith,
Wurmser
were all on Bush's foreign policy team on 9-11.
– In 1998, eight members of Bush's future team, including Perle, Wolfowitz and Rumsfeld, wrote Clinton urging upon him a strategy that "should aim, above all, at the removal of Saddam Hussein.
On Jan. 1, 2001, nine months before 9-11, Wurmser
called for U.S.-Israeli attacks "to broaden the (Middle East) conflict
to strike fatally ... the regimes of Damascus, Baghdad, Tripoli, Teheran and
Gaza ... to establish the recognition that fighting with either the United
States or Israel is suicidal." "Crises can be opportunities," added
Wurmser.”Moreover, the majority of
those in and out of government who were Middle East experts had grave concerns
about the wisdom of invading Iraq and serious doubts about claims that Saddam's
regime posed an urgent threat to American security. What, then, gave
neoconservatives like Wolfowitz
and Perle such abiding faith in their own positions?
–
Another person is revisionist historian Stephen Sniegoski. This is what he says about Laurie Mylroie and the Iraq war-
"The real threat, Wolfowitz insisted, was state-sponsored terrorism orchestrated by Saddam. In the meeting, says Richard A. Clarke, Wolfowitz cited the writings of Laurie Mylroie, a controversial academic who had written a book advancing an elaborate conspiracy theory that Saddam was behind the 1993 World Trade Center bombing.
The Mylroie reference is very interesting. Mylroie is a neocon, and other neocons have picked up and trumpeted her Iraq-involvement thesis. While Saddam was still in power she claimed that al Qaeda was a front for Iraqi intelligence. And she emphasized Saddam's purported weapons of mass destruction. Her book was originally published by the American Enterprise Institute, a leading neocon think tank. Regan Books, an imprint of HarperCollins, released the book in paperback. HarperCollins is owned by pro-neocon/pro-Zionist Rupert Murdoch, who also owns the Fox News Channel, which, in turn, booked Mylroie as an Iraq expert during the build-up to the war. Fox News was the leading media cheerleader for the war, and Mylroie's commentary served the same war-propaganda purposes as Ahmed Chalabi's bogus intelligence.” (See "Osama, Saddam, and the Bombs" by David Plotz, Slate, September 28, 2001.)
"The Republican attack machine is
trying to paint Clarke as some kind of partisan Democrat — an unlikely
characterization of a 30-year career in government at the highest levels,
starting out in the Reagan administration. What we are witnessing here is yet
the latest episode in an extraordinary series of whistle-blowing accounts by
government insiders: Ambassador Joe
Wilson, Lt. Col. Karen
Kwiatkowski, and now Clarke, all patriotic
Americans pointing to a dangerous vulnerability."
During the months leading up to the invasion of Iraq
Benjamin Netanyahu addressed a hearing hosted by the House Committee on
Government Reform on 12 September
2002. C-SPAN televised his remarks. He spoke about Conflict
with Iraq - An Israeli Perspective. This was another example of
Israel’s complicity in support of the U.S. Iraq invasion.
The following is an excerpt from his talk.
“History’s judgment should inform our own judgment today.
Did Israel launch that preemptive strike because Saddam had committed a
specific act of terror against us? Did we coordinate our actions with the
international community? Did we condition that operation on the approval of the
United Nations?
No, Israel acted because we understood that a nuclear-armed Sadaam would place
our very survival at risk. Today, the United States must destroy that same
regime because a nuclear-armed Sadaam will place the security of our entire
world at risk.”
Rumsfeld and
Wolfowitz's war on Iraq began before 1998 - now it's
official.
http://wwwonlineopinion.com.au/view.asp?article=1499
Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and Deputy Secretary Paul Wolfowitz undertook a full-fledged lobbying campaign in 1998 to get former President Bill Clinton to start a war with Iraq and topple Saddam Hussein's regime. They claimed that the country posed a threat to the United States, according to documents obtained from a former Clinton aide.
This new information begs the question: what is really driving the Bush Administration's desire to start a war with Iraq if two of Bush's future top defence officials were already planting the seeds for an attack five years ago?
In 1998, Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz were working in the private sector. Both were involved with the right-wing think tank Project for a New American Century, which was established in 1997 by William Kristol, editor of the Weekly Standard, to promote global leadership and dictate American foreign policy.
While Clinton was dealing with the worldwide threat from al Qa'ida and Osama Bin Laden, Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz wrote to Clinton urging him to use military force against Iraq and remove Hussein from power because the country posed a threat to the United States due to its alleged ability to develop weapons of mass destruction. The Jan 26, 1998 letter sent to Clinton from the Project for the New American Century said a war with Iraq should be initiated even if the United States could not muster support from its allies in the United Nations. Kristol also signed the letter.
"We are writing you because we are convinced that current American policy toward Iraq is not succeeding, and that we may soon face a threat in the Middle East more serious than any we have known since the end of the Cold War. In your upcoming State of the Union Address, you have an opportunity to chart a clear and determined course for meeting this threat. We urge you to seize that opportunity, and to enunciate a new strategy that would secure the interests of the U.S. and our friends and allies around the world. That strategy should aim, above all, at the removal of Saddam Hussein's regime from power."
"We urge you to turn your Administration's attention to implementing a strategy for removing Saddam's regime from power. This will require a full complement of diplomatic, political and military efforts. Although we are fully aware of the dangers and difficulties in implementing this policy, we believe the dangers of failing to do so are far greater. We believe the U.S. has the authority under existing UN resolutions to take the necessary steps, including military steps, to protect our vital interests in the Gulf. In any case, American policy cannot continue to be crippled by a misguided insistence on unanimity in the UN Security Council."
Because the letters were written in 1998 it proves that this war was planned well before 9-11 and casts further doubt on the claims that Saddam Hussein was involved in the 9-11 terrorist attacks.
Bush
Advisers Planned Iraq War Since 1990s
http://www.fromthewilderness.com/free/ww3/100102_bush_advisors.html
The George W. Bush
Administration's intentions of removing Saddam Hussein from power are not a
recent development by any stretch of the imagination. Top White House officials
affiliated with conservative think tanks and past administrations have been
developing strategies for removing the Iraqi leader since the
1990s.
The president's
real goal in Iraq
Among the architects of this
would-be American Empire are a group of brilliant and powerful people who now
hold key positions in the Bush administration: They envision the creation and
enforcement of what they call a worldwide "Pax
Americana," or American peace. But so far, the American people have not
appreciated the true extent of that ambition.
How We Got Into
This Imperial Pickle: A PNAC Primer
The
"outsiders" from PNAC were now powerful "insiders,"
placed in important positions from which they could exert maximum pressure on
U.S. policy: Cheney is Vice President, Rumsfeld is Defense Secretary, Wolfowitz
is Deputy Defense Secretary, I. Lewis Libby is Cheney's Chief of Staff,
Elliot Abrams is in charge of Middle East policy at the National Security
Council, Dov Zakheim is comptroller for the Defense Department, John Bolton is
Undersecretary of State, Richard Perle is chair of the Defense Policy advisory
board at the Pentagon, former CIA director James Woolsey is on that panel as
well, etc. etc. (PNAC's chairman, Bill Kristol, is the editor of Rupert
Murdoch's The Weekly Standard.) In short, PNAC had a lock on military
policy-creation in the Bush Administration.
