Investigation Clears Perle of Wrongdoing, Rumsfeld Says

Excite - News: "Investigation Clears Perle of Wrongdoing, Rumsfeld Says | Nov 16, 4:10 pm ET

SEOUL (Reuters) - An investigation by the Defense Department's inspector general has cleared Pentagon adviser Richard Perle of any violation of conflict of interest laws in his private consulting business, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said on Sunday.
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Perle, an architect of the Iraq war, remains as a member of the board, which is now headed by former Florida Republican Rep. Tillie Fowler.

Perle stepped down after facing allegations of a conflict of interest over his work as an adviser for the bankrupt telecommunications firm Global Crossing Ltd. .
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The New York Times reported on Saturday that Perle was the focus of a new inquiry by Hollinger International, a media conglomerate where he serves as director. The inquiry is focusing on several transactions, including $2.5 million in payments made by the company into Trireme Partners, a venture capital company in which Perle is a managing partner, the newspaper said.

Neo-conned: Case for war made up, say top names

Case for war made up, say top names: "By ANDREW GUMBEL in Los Angeles | 11/10/03: (The Independent)

An unprecedented array of United States intelligence professionals, diplomats and former Pentagon officials have gone on record to lambast the Bush Administration for its distortion of the case for war against Iraq.

In their view, the very foundations of intelligence-gathering have been damaged in ways that could take years, even decades, to repair.
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They also reconstruct the way senior White House officials - notably Vice-President Dick Cheney - leaned on the CIA to find evidence that would fit a preordained set of conclusions.

"There was never a clear and present danger. There was never an imminent threat. Iraq - and we have very good intelligence on this - was never part of the picture of terrorism," says Mel Goodman, a veteran CIA analyst who now teaches at the National War College.
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"The theory that you can bludgeon political grievances out of existence doesn't have much of a track record," he [George Bush snr's ambassador to Saudi Arabia, Chas Freeman] says, "so essentially we have been neo-conned into applying a school of thought about foreign affairs that has failed everywhere it has been tried."

Barrage Blasts Wolfowitz's Baghdad Hotel: "I wish Wolfowitz had been killed" says grocer

Excite - News: "Rocket Barrage Blasts Wolfowitz's Baghdad Hotel | Oct 26, 5:35 am ET | By Carol Giacomo

BAGHDAD (Reuters) - Anti-American guerrillas blasted the Baghdad hotel where U.S. Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz was staying with a barrage of rockets on Sunday, but the No. 2 Pentagon official survived unharmed, U.S. officials said.

The brazen attack killed a U.S. soldier but a defiant Wolfowitz vowed that the United States would not be cowed into abandoning Iraq.

Fifteen people were also wounded in the strike that is a setback for the Bush administration, undermining its insistence the United States is winning the guerrilla war in Iraq despite escalating violence.
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Wolfowitz, a major force behind the United States invading Iraq, was led away by security forces. He appeared composed after descending a stairwell past thickening smoke and blood stains with a fire alarm blaring, witnesses said.
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Angry at U.S. occupation, Iraqis expressed regret at what they saw as an assassination attempt had failed.

"I wish Wolfowitz had been killed. I wish all Americans here would be killed," said Ali Hussein, a grocer in central Baghdad. "The Americans are not human beings, they are monsters. They lied to the Iraqi people."

Most censored stories in the media: #1 The Neoconservative Plan for Global Dominance

Project Censored: "#1 The Neoconservative Plan for Global Dominance
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... Eventually labeled "neoconservatives," this circle of influential strategists played important roles in the Defense Departments of Ford, Reagan and Bush Sr., at conservative think tanks throughout the '80s and '90s, and today occupies several key posts in the White House, Pentagon, and State Department. Most principal among them are:

·Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld, our current Vice-President and Defense Secretary respectively, who have been closely aligned since they served with the Ford administration in the 1970s;
·Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz, the key architect of the post-war reconstruction of Iraq;
·Richard Perle, past-chairman and still-member of the Pentagon's Defense Policy Board that has great influence over foreign military policies;
·William Kristol, editor of the Weekly Standard and founder of the powerful, neo-conservative think-tank, Project for a New American Century.
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Project Censored wishes to acknowledge that Jim Lobe, the Washington, D.C. correspondent for Inter Press Service (IPS), has been covering the ways in which neo-conservatives, using the Project for the New American Century (PNAC) among other mechanisms, used the 9/11 attacks to pursue their own agenda of global dominance and reshaping the Middle East virtually from the outset of the Bush administration’s “war on terrorism.” For more information, please vist the following link: http://www.ipsnews.net/focus/neo-cons/index.asp

Neoconservative Web

Irving Kristol -- father of neo-conservatives, William Kristol
William Kristol -- "Weekly Standard"/editor, FOX analyst, AEI/Director, PNAC/chairman, AEI/PNAC/share same building
Norman Podhoretz -- Jewish "Commentary"/editor, Abrams/father-in-law, AEI/Irving Kristol award, PNAC/signatory
Richard Perle -- UofChicago/son-in-law/student/Wohlstetter, Israel/Likud/1996-Oslo-Iraq/Co-author, Pentagon/Rumsfeld's Defense Advisory Board/ex-chairman
Paul Wolfowitz -- Pentagon/Deputy Secretary of Defense, UofChicago/student/Wohlstetter, PNAC/signatory
Elliot Abrams -- Bush/NSC/director of Near Eastern Affairs, Reagan/pardonned for Iran-Contra/Co-worked with Kagan, Podheretz/son-in-law, PNAC/signatory
I Lewis "Scott" Libby -- Cheney/chief of staff, PNAC/signatory
John Bolton -- AEI-ex-SVP, Under Secretary of State
Dick Cheney -- VP, PNAC/signatory
Donald Rumsfeld -- Pentagon/Deputy for Defense, PNAC/signatory
Robert Kagan -- Cheney/wife is next deputy national security adviser, Reagan/Abrams co-worker
Douglas Feith -- Pentagon/Wolfowitz/deputy for policy, Israel/Likud/1996-Oslo-Iraq/Co-author
Michael + Barara Ledeen -- AEI/fellow
David and Meyrav Wurmser -- Israel/Likud/1996-Oslo-Iraq/Co-author, State Dept/Mideast policy
Paula Dobriansky -- Undersecretary of State for Global Affairs
Daniel Pipes -- U.S. Institute of Peace, Middle East Forum/President
Michael Rubin -- AEI, Pentagon/Mideast policy
David Steinmann -- Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs (JINSA)/Chairman

The neoconservatives Crusade: 5 years, seven wars -- Iraq, Syria, ...

The Village Voice: Features: The Widening Crusade by Sydney H. Schanberg: "October 15 - 21, 2003

A few years later, in June 1997, a group of neoconservatives formed an entity called the Project for the New American Century (PNAC) and issued a Statement of Principles. 'The history of the 20th Century,' the statement said, 'should have taught us that it is important to shape circumstances before crises emerge, and to meet threats before they become dire.' One of its formal principles called for a major increase in defense spending 'to carry out our global responsibilities today.' Others cited the 'need to strengthen our ties to democratic allies and to challenge regimes hostile to our interests and values' and underscored 'America's unique role in preserving and extending an international order friendly to our security, our prosperity and our principles.' This, the statement said, constituted 'a Reaganite policy of military strength and moral clarity.'

Among the 25 signatories to the PNAC founding statement were Dick Cheney, I. Lewis Libby (Cheney's chief of staff), Donald Rumsfeld (who was also defense secretary under President Ford), and Paul Wolfowitz (Rumsfeld's No. 2 at the Pentagon, who was head of the Pentagon policy team in the first Bush presidency, reporting to Cheney, who was then defense secretary). Obviously, this fraternity has been marinating together for a long time. Other signers whose names might ring familiar were Elliot Abrams, Gary Bauer, William J. Bennett, Jeb Bush, and Norman Podhoretz.
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In his new book, Winning Modern Wars, retired general Wesley Clark, a candidate for the Democratic presidential nomination, offered a window into the Bush serial-war planning. He writes that serious planning for the Iraq war had already begun only two months after the 9-11 attack, and adds:

"As I went back through the Pentagon in November 2001, one of the senior military staff officers had time for a chat. Yes, we were still on track for going against Iraq, he said. But there was more. This was being discussed as part of a five-year campaign plan, he said, and there were a total of seven countries, beginning with Iraq, then Syria, Lebanon, Libya, Iran, Somalia and Sudan. . . . I left the Pentagon that afternoon deeply concerned."

AlterNet: All in the Neocon Family: an extended clan of spouses, children, and friends

AlterNet: All in the Neocon Family: "All in the Neocon Family
By Jim Lobe, AlterNet | March 27, 2003

What do William Kristol, Norman Podhoretz, Elliot Abrams, and Robert Kagan have in common? Yes, they are all die-hard hawks who have gained control of U.S. foreign policy since the 9/11 attacks. But they are also part of one big neoconservative family - an extended clan of spouses, children, and friends who have known each other for generations.

Neoconservatives are former liberals (which explains the 'neo' prefix) who advocate an aggressive unilateralist vision of U.S. global supremacy, which includes a close strategic alliance with Israel. Let's start with one of the founding fathers of the extended neocon clan: Irving Kristol.

The son of this proud couple is none other that William Kristol ...
Irving Kristol's most prominent disciple is Richard Perle ... he wed the daughter of his professor at the University of Chicago, the late Alfred Wohlstetter – the man who helped both his son-in-law and his fellow student Paul Wolfowitz get their start in Washington ...
Perle's own protege is Douglas Feith, who is now Wolfowitz's deputy for policy and is widely known for his right-wing Likud position. And why not? His father, Philadelphia businessman and philanthropist Dalck Feith, was once a follower of the great revisionist Zionist leader, Vladimir Jabotinsky, in his native Poland back in the 1930s ...
... A long-time collaborator with Perle, Michael Ledeen is married to Barbara Ledeen, a founder and director of the anti-feminist Independent Women's Forum (IWF), who is currently a major player in the Republican leadership on Capitol Hill. Richard Perle, Douglas Feith, and another neo-con power couple – David and Meyrav Wurmser – co-authored a 1996 memorandum for Likud leader Binyamin Netanyahu outlining how to break the Oslo peace process and invade Iraq as the first step to transforming the Middle East.
Lynne Cheney also hangs her hat at AEI. Her husband Dick Cheney recently chose Victoria Nuland to become his next deputy national security adviser. Nuland, as it turns out, is married to Robert Kagan, Bill Kristol's main comrade-in-arms and the co-founder of PNAC.
... None other than Iran-contra veteran Elliott Abrams.
... [who] worked closely with Bob Kagan back in the Reagan era. He is also the son-in-law of Norman Podhoretz, long-time editor of the influential conservative Jewish publication Commentary, and his wife, Midge Decter, a fearsome polemicist in her own right.
... is also the father of John Podhoretz, a columnist for the Murdoch-owned New York Post and frequent guest on the Murdoch-owned Fox News channel.
[Norman's] proteges include former U.N. ambassador Jeane Kirkpatrick and Richard Pipes, who was Ronald Reagan's top advisor on the "Evil Empire," as the president liked to call the Soviet Union. His son, Daniel Pipes, has also made a career out of battling "evil," which in his case is Islam.
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... Contrary to appearances, the neocons do not constitute a powerful mass political movement. They are instead a small, tighly-knit clan whose incestuous familial and personal connections, both within and outside the Bush administration, have allowed them grab control of the future of American foreign policy.

Amazon.com: Rogue Nation: American Unilateralism and the Failure of Good Intentions

Amazon.com: Books: Rogue Nation: American Unilateralism and the Failure of Good Intentions | by Clyde Prestowitz
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His early use of Webster's definition of "Rogue" as "deviant, having an abnormally savage or unpredictable disposition" not only suits the unilateralist Bush team perfectly, but makes it clear that in objective terms, as perceived by the rest of the world--not just the Middle East, but the responsible Asian powers as well as what Rumsfeld revealingly denigrates as "old Europe"--the USA is indeed a "rogue nation."
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At the top of page 277: "The imperial project of the so-called neoconservatives is not conservatism at all but radicalism, egotism, and adverturism articulated in the stirring rhetoric of traditional patriotism. Real conservatives have never been messianic or doctrinaire. The very essence of conservatism, which the neoconservatives constantly preach, is limited government. Yet the imperial project they are proposing will greatly increase the role of government both at home and abroad. ... This is not conservatism. It is Big Government."
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As the worldwide outpouring of post-9/11 sympathy for America has given way to worldwide anti-American protests, Americans are asking why the world hates us. This nuanced but unsparing book gives a bill of particulars. American high-handedness has exacerbated tensions in hot spots from the West Bank to the Korean peninsula. American unilateralism has sabotaged a host of international agreements on such issues as land mines, biological weapons and the International Criminal Court. America preaches free trade while protecting its steel, textiles and agriculture from foreign competition. America, Atkins argues, runs a wasteful, SUV-centered economy while it rejects treaties on the environment and global warming. America's self-proclaimed role as champion of democracy flies in the face of its history of installing and supporting dictators in countries from Indonesia to Iraq. Most of all, Atkins says, the world fears America's overwhelming military might, now ominously paired with a doctrine of "preempting" the emergence of rival powers. These problems have been much discussed of late, but Prestowitz, author of Trading Places, pulls them together into a comprehensive and historically informed survey of contemporary U. S. foreign relations. Although he forthrightly calls the United States an imperial power, Prestowitz, a former Reagan Administration trade official, is by no means anti-American. He insists that America's intentions are usually good, and that the world likes and admires Americans when they live up to their own ideals. Still, his is a damning portrait of the United States as seen through the angry, bewildered eyes of foreigners: selfish, erratic, hypocritical, muscle-bound and a bad citizen of the world.

POLITICS: Bush Stance on Syria Hit Shows Neo-Cons Still Hold Sway

POLITICS: Bush Stance on Syria Hit Shows Neo-Cons Still Hold Sway: "Analysis by Jim Lobe | October 7, 2003

ROME, Oct 7 (IPS) - The neo-conservatives in and around the administration of U.S. President George W. Bush may be on the defensive, but Washington's reaction to the Israeli attack on Syria Sunday show that they remain in the driver's seat at the White House.

The fact that Bush has himself refused to in any way criticise the Israeli attack -- the first on Syria since the 1973 Arab-Israeli war -- shows how far the neo-cons have succeeded in aligning U.S. policy with the right-wing government in Israel, a key goal going back to the first Likud government of the late Menahim Begin and, more recently, since Prime Minister Ariel Sharon won elections in early 2001.
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Syria was also cited as a target in a public letter to Bush on Sep. 20, 2001 -- just 9 days after the terrorist attacks on New York and the Pentagon -- ...

Among other measures, it called for Bush to take military action in Afghanistan to remove the Taliban and destroy al Qaeda, to remove Saddam Hussein in Iraq ”even if the evidence does not link Iraq directly to the (Sep. 11) attacks; and cut off aid to the Palestinian Authority unless it puts a stop to all terrorist acts emanating from territory under its control.”

... ”We believe the administration should demand that Iran and Syria immediately cease all military, financial, and political support for Hezbollah and its operations. Should Iran and Syria refuse to comply, the administration should consider appropriate measures of retaliation against these known state sponsors of terrorism.”

The letter was signed by 39 prominent right-wingers, almost all of them neo-conservatives, such as Kristol himself, Perle, Kirkpatrick, and Gaffney. ”Israel has been and remains America's staunchest ally against international terrorism, especially in the Middle East,” ...

Throughout the Iraq war, many of these same people, as well as their close associates in the administration, such as Deputy Secretary of Defence Paul Wolfowitz and Feith, argued that Syria represented a serious threat to the United States and its troops in Iraq, at one point asserting that Damascus was sheltering senior Iraqi leaders and its WMD.

... former CIA director James Woolsey, was widely quoted on television as saying that the ”war on terrorism” should be seen as ”World War IV” that should include as targets ”fascists of Iraq and Syria”.

Iraq War Hawks Have Plans to Reshape Entire Mideast

Iraq War Hawks Have Plans to Reshape Entire Mideast: "Published on Tuesday, September 10, 2002 in the Boston Globe | Iraq War Hawks Have Plans to Reshape Entire Mideast | by John Donnelly and Anthony Shadid

WASHINGTON - As the Bush administration debates going to war against Iraq, its most hawkish members are pushing a sweeping vision for the Middle East that sees the overthrow of President Saddam Hussein of Iraq as merely a first step in the region's transformation.
The argument for reshaping the political landscape in the Mideast has been pushed for years by some Washington think tanks and in hawkish circles. It is now being considered as a possible US policy with the ascent of key hard-liners in the administration - from Paul Wolfowitz and Douglas Feith in the Pentagon to John Hannah and Lewis Libby on the vice president's staff and John Bolton in the State Department, analysts and officials say.
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''The goal is not just a new regime in Iraq. The goal is a new Middle East,'' said Raad Alkadiri, an Iraq analyst with PFC, a Washington-based energy consulting organization. ''The goal has been and remains one of the main driving factors of preemptive action against Iraq.''

Cheney revealed some of the thinking in a speech in August when he made the administration's case for a regime change. He argued Hussein's overthrow would ''bring about a number of benefits to the region'' and enhance US ability to advance the Israeli-Palestinian peace process.
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A powerful corollary of the strategy is that a pro-US Iraq would make the region safer for Israel and, indeed, its staunchest proponents are ardent supporters of the Israeli right-wing. Administration officials, meanwhile, have increasingly argued that the onset of an Iraq allied to the US would give the administration more sway in bringing about a settlement to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, though Cheney and others have offered few details on precisely how.
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''Everyone will flip out, starting with the Saudis,'' said Meyrav Wurmser, director of the Center for Middle East Policy at the Hudson Institute in Washington. ''It will send shock waves throughout the Arab world.

''Look, we already are pushing for democracy in the Palestinian Authority - though not with a huge amount of success - and we need a little bit more of a heavy-handed approach,'' she said. ''But if we can get a democracy in the Palestinian Authority, democracy in Iraq, get the Egyptians to improve their human rights and open up their system, it will be a spectacular change. After a war with Iraq, then you really shape the region.''

US thinktanks give lessons in foreign policy

Guardian Unlimited | World dispatch | US thinktanks give lessons in foreign policy: "US thinktanks give lessons in foreign policy | Brian Whitaker reports on the network of research institutes whose views and TV appearances are supplanting all other experts on Middle Eastern issues |Monday August 19, 2002

A little-known fact about Richard Perle, the leading advocate of hardline policies at the Pentagon, is that he once wrote a political thriller.
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In real life too, Mr Perle is not fighting his battle single-handed. Around him there is a cosy and cleverly-constructed network of Middle East "experts" who share his neo-conservative outlook and who pop up as talking heads on US television, in newspapers, books, testimonies to congressional committees, and at lunchtime gatherings in Washington.

The network centres on research institutes - thinktanks that attempt to influence government policy and are funded by tax-deductible gifts from unidentified donors.

When he is not too busy at the Pentagon, or too busy running Hollinger Digital - part of the group that publishes the Daily Telegraph in Britain - or at board meetings of the Jerusalem Post, Mr Perle is "resident fellow" at one of the thinktanks - the American Enterprise Institute (AEI).
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[Names numerous interconnections: David Wurmser, Meyrav Wurmser, Colonel Yigal Carmon, Michael Rubin, Daniel Pipes

No War For Israel

No War For Israel: "Bush's Israeli Lobby Advisors!

The reality of the situation is that no one in Washington, whether in the Pentagon (top military brass, joint chiefs, etc) or in Congress, wants this Israeli proxy war against Iraq. Only those connected to the Israeli lobby want this war.

It is very important to know the identity of these pro-Israeli officials within the administration in order to understand who is behind this war-mongering and realizing that is serving Israeli interests, not American interests.

It is unfortunate that Bush has picked these people to these top posts. The sad fact for him is that in the instant that he decides not to go to war against Iraq, the Israeli lobby will bring him down, like they did to his father, a decade earlier.

Note: The Washington Institute for Near East Policy is one of the Israeli lobby's 'think tank.' Many of the Israeli lobby's 'experts' come from this front group, like Martin Indyk.
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[Key names: Richard Perle, Paul Wolfowitz, Douglas Feith, Edward Luttwak, Henry Kissinger, Dov Zakheim, Kenneth Adelman, I. Lewis Libby, Robert Satloff, Elliott Abrams, Marc Grossman, Richard Haass, Robert Zoellick et al.]

Whose War? A neoconservative clique seeks to ensnare our country in a series of wars that are not in America’s interest. by Patrick J. Buchanan

Whose War?: "March 24, 2003 issue
Copyright © 2003 The American Conservative | Whose War? | A neoconservative clique seeks to ensnare our country in a series of wars that are not in America’s interest. by Patrick J. Buchanan

The War Party may have gotten its war. But it has also gotten something it did not bargain for. Its membership lists and associations have been exposed and its motives challenged. In a rare moment in U.S. journalism, Tim Russert put this question directly to Richard Perle: “Can you assure American viewers ... that we’re in this situation against Saddam Hussein and his removal for American security interests? And what would be the link in terms of Israel?"
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The War Party’s plan, however, had been in preparation far in advance of 9/11. And when President Bush, after defeating the Taliban, was looking for a new front in the war on terror, they put their precooked meal in front of him. Bush dug into it.
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On Sept. 12, Americans were still in shock when Bill Bennett told CNN that we were in “a struggle between good and evil,” that the Congress must declare war on “militant Islam,” and that “overwhelming force” must be used. Bennett cited Lebanon, Libya, Syria, Iraq, Iran, and China as targets for attack. Not, however, Afghanistan, the sanctuary of Osama’s terrorists. How did Bennett know which nations must be smashed before he had any idea who attacked us?

The Wall Street Journal immediately offered up a specific target list, calling for U.S. air strikes on “terrorist camps in Syria, Sudan, Libya, and Algeria, and perhaps even in parts of Egypt.” Yet, not one of Bennett’s six countries, nor one of these five, had anything to do with 9/11.
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On Sept. 20, forty neoconservatives sent an open letter to the White House instructing President Bush on how the war on terror must be conducted. Signed by Bennett, Podhoretz, Kirkpatrick, Perle, Kristol, and Washington Post columnist Charles Krauthammer, the letter was an ultimatum. To retain the signers’ support, the president was told, he must target Hezbollah for destruction, retaliate against Syria and Iran if they refuse to sever ties to Hezbollah, and overthrow Saddam. Any failure to attack Iraq, the signers warned Bush, “will constitute an early and perhaps decisive surrender in the war on international terrorism.”
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In 1992, a startling document was leaked from the office of Paul Wolfowitz at the Pentagon. Barton Gellman of the Washington Post called it a “classified blueprint intended to help ‘set the nation’s direction for the next century.’” The Wolfowitz Memo called for a permanent U.S. military presence on six continents to deter all “potential competitors from even aspiring to a larger regional or global role.” Containment, the victorious strategy of the Cold War, was to give way to an ambitious new strategy designed to “establish and protect a new order.”

Though the Wolfowitz Memo was denounced and dismissed in 1992, it became American policy in the 33-page National Security Strategy (NSS) issued by President Bush on Sept. 21, 2002. Washington Post reporter Tim Reich describes it as a “watershed in U.S. foreign policy” that “reverses the fundamental principles that have guided successive Presidents for more than 50 years: containment and deterrence.”

Ad hoc office under Douglas Feith appears key to nformal network of mostly neo-conservatives

neocons: "How Neocons Influence the Pentagon By Jim Lobe in Washington, D.C. Asia Times August 8, 2003

An ad hoc office under US Undersecretary of Defense for Policy Douglas Feith appears to have acted as the key base for an informal network of mostly neo-conservative political appointees that circumvented normal inter-agency channels to lead the push for war against Iraq.

The Office of Special Plans (OSP), which worked alongside the Near East and South Asia (NESA) bureau in Feith's domain, was originally created by Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and Deputy Secretary Paul Wolfowitz to review raw information collected by the official US intelligence agencies for connections between Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein and al-Qaeda.

Retired intelligence officials from the State Department, the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) and the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) have long charged that the two offices exaggerated and manipulated intelligence about Iraq before passing it along to the White House.

But key personnel who worked in both NESA and OSP were part of a broader network of neo-conservative ideologues and activists who worked with other George W Bush political appointees scattered around the national security bureaucracy to move the country to war, according to retired Lieutenant-Colonel Karen Kwiatkowski, who was assigned to NESA from May 2002 through February 2003.
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Along with Feith, all of the political appointees have in common a close identification with the views of the right-wing Likud Party in Israel.
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"They would draw up 'talking points' they would use and distribute to their friends," said Kwiatkowski. "But the talking points would be changed continually, not because of new intel [intelligence], but because the press was poking holes in what was in the memos."
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[Key Names: Paul Wolfowitz, Richard Perle, Douglas Feith, Elliott Abrams
Luti, William Bruner, Chris Straub, John Bolton; Michael Wurmser
Michael Rubin, David Schenker, Michael Makovsky, Chris Lehman

US Neoimperialism in World Affairs May Outlast Bush

US Neoimperialism in World Affairs May Outlast Bush: "US Neoimperialism in World Affairs May Outlast Bush Inderjeet Parmar, Special to Arab News MANCHESTER. 3 October 2003
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A neoconservative movement has been getting stronger since the 1970s, when Irving Kristol resurrected the American Enterprise Institute (AEI), from which Bush has borrowed at least twenty members for his administration, including John Bolton, Michael Rubin, and Richard Perle. In the early 1990s, Edwin J. Fuelner, Jr., head of the conservative Heritage Foundation, vowed to “build a new governing establishment by the end of the decade.” Currently, that establishment is headed by the Project for the New American Century (PNAC) which, since its founding in 1997, has lobbied for a war for regime change and eliminating Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction. Donald Rumsfeld, secretary of defense, Paul Wolfowitz, his deputy, Vice President Richard Cheney, and ex-CIA Director James Woolsey are leading founder members. Kristol’s son, William, heads up the PNAC. PNAC is thoroughly interconnected with a number of right-wing pro-war organizations, including Americans for Victory Over Terrorism, an exposure committee for fighting the “enemy within”, to which, among others, the current American administrator in Iraq, Paul Bremer, belongs.

Neoconservative Web

	Role	Relations	AEI, PNAC, JINSA	Other Notes
Irving Kristol	"godfather" of neoconservatives Former editor of Commentary published by American Jewish Committee	father of William	AEI scholar
William Kristol	Hub of neo-conservatives Editor Weekly Standard, Fox Analyst	son of Irving	AEI Director, PNAC Chairman
Norman Podhoretz	"Commentary"/editor	Abrams/father-in-law	Irving Kristol award, PNAC signatory
Richard Perle	Pentagon Rumsfeld's Defense Advisory Board ex-chairman	UofChicago student son-in-law Wohlstetter	AEI Fellow, JINSA founder	Israel/Likud 1996-Oslo-Iraq Co-author Helped found JINSA, CSP Open Letter to the Clinton
Paul Wolfowitz	Pentagon/Deputy Secretary of Defense	UofChicago student Wohlstetter	-, PNAC signatory	Key architect of war in Iraq Co-wrote 1992 Defense Planning Guide Open Letter to the Clinton
Elliot Abrams	NSC Director of Near Eastern Affairs	Podheretz, son-in-law Co-worked with Kagan	-, PNAC signatory	Reagan/pardonned for Iran-Contra Open Letter to the Clinton
I Lewis "Scott" Libby	Chief of staff to VP Cheney	VP Cheney	-, PNAC founder	Co-wrote 1992 Defense Planning Guide
John Bolton	Under Secretary of State	State Dept	AEI ex-SVP	Open Letter to the Clinton
Dick Cheney	Vice President	VP Cheney	Wife is AEI scholar, PNAC signatory
Donald Rumsfeld	Pentagon Deputy for Defense	Pentagon	-, PNAC signatory	Open Letter to the Clinton
Robert Kagan	Weekly Standard writer	VP Cheney Co-worked with Abrams	PNAC co-founder	Wife is next deputy national security adviser to Cheney
Douglas Feith --	Under Secretary for policy	Pentagon, Wolfowitz deputy	VP JINSA	Israel/Likud/1996-Oslo-Iraq/Co-author Open Letter to the Clinton CSP Director
David, Meyrav Wurmser	Mideast Policy	VP Cheney		Israel/Likud/1996-Oslo-Iraq/Co-author
Michael Rubin	Pentagon consultant Mideast policy	Pentagon	AEI Fellow
Michael,  Barara Ledeen			AEI Fellow JINSA board
David Steinman			JINSA Chairman	CSP Director
James Woolsey			JINSA	Ex CIA Chief
Paula Dobriansky	Undersecretary of State for Global Affairs	State Dept
Dov Zakheim	Defense Dept	Pentagon		Open Letter to the Clinton

A road to a calmer situation in Palestine does in fact exist, it runs through Baghdad.

Foreign Affairs - Palestine, Iraq, and American Strategy - Michael Scott Doran: "Palestine, Iraq, and American Strategy Michael Scott Doran From Foreign Affairs, January/February 2003

Summary: Many critics argue that the Bush administration should put off a showdown with Saddam Hussein and focus instead on achieving a breakthrough in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. But they fail to understand that although Palestine is central to the symbolism of Arab politics, it is actually marginal to its substance. Now, as in 1991, if a road to a calmer situation in Palestine does in fact exist, it runs through Baghdad.

Michael Scott Doran is Assistant Professor of Near Eastern Studies at Princeton University and Adjunct Senior Fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations. He is the author of Pan-Arabism Before Nasser: Egyptian Power Politics and the Palestine Question. "

USATODAY.com - Wolfowitz comments revive doubts over Iraq's WMD: Just Complete and Utter Lies

USATODAY.com - Wolfowitz comments revive doubts over Iraq's WMD: "Posted 5/30/2003 3:21 PM Updated 6/1/2003 2:54 PM

BRUSSELS (AP) — As President Bush begins a European tour to patch up trans-Atlantic relations, comments from senior defense officials about Iraq's weapons have revived controversy in Europe over whether the war was justified.
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Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz cited bureaucratic reasons for focusing on Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction, and said a "huge" result of the war was to enable Washington to withdraw its troops from Saudi Arabia.

"The truth is that for reasons that have a lot to do with the U.S. government bureaucracy, we settled on the one issue that everyone could agree on which was weapons of mass destruction as the core reason," Wolfowitz was quoted as saying in a Pentagon transcript of an interview with Vanity Fair.

The magazine's reporter did not tape the telephone interview and provided a slightly different version of the quote in the article: "For bureaucratic reasons we settled on one issue, weapons of mass destruction, because it was the one reason everyone could agree on."
...
However, the remarks were widely published in Europe and were seen by skeptical Europeans as a tacit admission that the United States overstated Iraq's weapons threat.

The Daily Express of London ran a report Friday on the statements by the two U.S. officials with the headline "Just Complete and Utter Lies."

"Claims that the world was lied to about the reasons for going to war in Iraq gathered pace yesterday as fresh doubts were cast on Britain and America's account of Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction," the newspaper said.
...
In Germany, where the war was widely unpopular, the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeiting newspaper said the comments showed America is losing the battle for credibility.

"The charge of deception is inescapable," the newspaper said.
...
Wolfowitz insisted in the interview, and in Singapore on Friday, that there had always been three major concerns.

"One was weapons of mass destruction, second was terrorism, and the third ... was the abuse of Iraqis by their own government," Wolfowitz said at the sidelines of the Asia Security Conference in Singapore.

"And in a sense there was a fourth overriding one, which was the connection between those first two, the connection between the weapons of mass destruction and terrorism. All three of those have been there, they've always been part of the rationale and I think it s been very clear."

American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee: "The misadventures of neoconservatives"

American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee: "The misadventures of neoconservatives": "'The misadventures of neoconservatives' | April 15, 2003 | By Ali Abunimah and Hussein Ibish
...
As the war in Iraq moves toward its conclusion, neoconservatives in and around the Bush administration are beginning to aggressively push a chilling agenda for a generalized war against much of the Arab and Islamic worlds.

This program to deliberately unleash a calamitous "clash of civilizations" must be urgently confronted before it succeeds in plunging us into a cycle of uncontrolled chaos and confrontation.

Former CIA Director James Woolsey illustrated how extreme this vision really is when he recently told a group of California college students that the United States is engaged in fighting "World War IV," which will "last considerably longer than either World Wars I or II," but hopefully not as long as the Cold War.
...
Stalwarts of the first Bush administration such as former Seretary of State James Baker, former National Security Adviser Brent Scowcroft and former Secretary of State Lawrence Eagleburger have been openly trying to steer President Bush away from what one unnamed former senior official called "this bum advice he has been getting" from neocons.

How Neoconservatives Conquered Washington and Launched a War, by Michael Lind

How Neoconservatives Conquered Washington ? and Launched a War, by Michael Lind: "How Neoconservatives Conquered Washington ? and Launched a War by Michael Lind April 10, 2003

America's allies and enemies alike are baffled. What is going on in the United States? Who is making foreign policy? And what are they trying to achieve?
...
The Israel lobby itself is divided into Jewish and Christian wings. Wolfowitz and Feith have close ties to the Jewish-American Israel lobby. Wolfowitz, who has relatives in Israel, has served as the Bush administration's liaison to the American Israel Public Affairs Committee. Feith was given an award by the Zionist Organization of America, citing him as a "pro-Israel activist." While out of power in the Clinton years, Feith collaborated with Perle to coauthor a policy paper for Likud that advised the Israeli government to end the Oslo peace process, reoccupy the territories, and crush Yasser Arafat's government.

Such experts are not typical of Jewish-Americans, who mostly voted for Gore in 2000. The most fervent supporters of Likud in the Republican electorate are Southern Protestant fundamentalists. The religious right believes that God gave all of Palestine to the Jews, and fundamentalist congregations spend millions to subsidize Jewish settlements in the occupied territories.

The final corner of the neoconservative pentagon is occupied by several right-wing media empires, with roots – odd as it seems – in the British Commonwealth and South Korea. Rupert Murdoch disseminates propaganda through his Fox television network. His magazine, the Weekly Standard – edited by William Kristol, the former chief of staff of Dan Quayle (vice president, 1989-1993) – acts as a mouthpiece for defense intellectuals such as Perle, Wolfowitz, Feith and Woolsey as well as for Sharon's government. The National Interest (of which I was executive editor, 1991-1994) is now funded by Conrad Black, who owns the Jerusalem Post and the Hollinger empire in Britain and Canada. [INCLUDING THE DAILY TELEGRAPH]
....
...the foreign policy of the world's only global power is being made by a small clique that is unrepresentative of either the U.S. population or the mainstream foreign policy establishment.

The core group now in charge consists of neoconservative defense intellectuals. (They are called "neoconservatives" because many of them started off as anti-Stalinist leftists or liberals before moving to the far right.) Inside the government, the chief defense intellectuals include Paul Wolfowitz, the deputy secretary of defense. He is the defense mastermind of the Bush administration; Donald Rumsfeld is an elderly figurehead who holds the position of defense secretary only because Wolfowitz himself is too controversial. Others include Douglas Feith, No. 3 at the Pentagon; Lewis "Scooter" Libby, a Wolfowitz protégé who is Cheney's chief of staff; John R. Bolton, a right-winger assigned to the State Department to keep Colin Powell in check; and Elliott Abrams, recently appointed to head Middle East policy at the National Security Council.
...
Then they had a stroke of luck – Cheney was put in charge of the presidential transition (the period between the election in November and the accession to office in January). Cheney used this opportunity to stack the administration with his hard-line allies. Instead of becoming the de facto president in foreign policy, as many had expected, Secretary of State Powell found himself boxed in by Cheney's right-wing network, including Wolfowitz, Perle, Feith, Bolton and Libby.

The neocons took advantage of Bush's ignorance and inexperience. Unlike his father, a Second World War veteran who had been ambassador to China, director of the CIA, and vice president, George W was a thinly educated playboy who had failed repeatedly in business before becoming the governor of Texas, a largely ceremonial position (the state's lieutenant governor has more power). His father is essentially a northeastern moderate Republican; George W, raised in west Texas, absorbed the Texan cultural combination of machismo, anti-intellectualism and overt religiosity. The son of upper-class Episcopalian parents, he converted to Southern fundamentalism in a midlife crisis. Fervent Christian Zionism, along with an admiration for macho Israeli soldiers that sometimes coexists with hostility to liberal Jewish-American intellectuals, is a feature of the Southern culture.

The younger Bush was tilting away from Powell and toward Wolfowitz ("Wolfie," as he calls him) even before 9/11 gave him something he had lacked: a mission in life other than following in his dad's footsteps. There are signs of estrangement between the cautious father and the crusading son: Last year, veterans of the first Bush administration, including Baker, Scowcroft and Lawrence Eagleburger, warned publicly against an invasion of Iraq without authorization from Congress and the U.N.

It is not clear that George W fully understands the grand strategy that Wolfowitz and other aides are unfolding. He seems genuinely to believe that there was an imminent threat to the U.S. from Saddam Hussein's "weapons of mass destruction," something the leading neocons say in public but are far too intelligent to believe themselves. ...
...
So that is the bizarre story of how neoconservatives took over Washington and steered the U.S. into a Middle Eastern war unrelated to any plausible threat to the U.S. and opposed by the public of every country in the world except Israel. The frightening thing is the role of happenstance and personality. ...

The gameplan among Washington's hawks has long been to reshape the Middle East along US-Israeli lines

Guardian Unlimited | World dispatch | Playing skittles with Saddam: "Playing skittles with Saddam | The gameplan among Washington's hawks has long been to reshape the Middle East along US-Israeli lines, writes Brian Whitaker | Tuesday September 3, 2002

In a televised speech last week, President Hosni Mubarak of Egypt predicted devastating consequences for the Middle East if Iraq is attacked.
...
They are probably still splitting their sides with laughter in the Pentagon. But Mr Mubarak and the hawks do agree on one thing: war with Iraq could spell disaster for several regimes in the Middle East. Mr Mubarak believes that would be bad. The hawks, though, believe it would be good.

For the hawks, disorder and chaos sweeping through the region would not be an unfortunate side-effect of war with Iraq, but a sign that everything is going according to plan.

In their eyes, Iraq is just the starting point - or, as a recent presentation at the Pentagon put it, 'the tactical pivot' - for re-moulding the Middle East on Israeli-American lines.
...
Its roots can be traced, at least in part, to a paper published in 1996 by an Israeli thinktank, the Institute for Advanced Strategic and Political Studies. Entitled "A clean break: a new strategy for securing the realm", it was intended as a political blueprint for the incoming government of Binyamin Netanyahu ...

Among other things, it suggested that the recently-signed Oslo accords might be dispensed with - "Israel has no obligations under the Oslo agreements if the PLO does not fulfil its obligations" - and that "alternatives to [Yasser] Arafat's base of power" could be cultivated. "Jordan has ideas on this," it added.

It also urged Israel to abandon any thought of trading land for peace with the Arabs, which it described as "cultural, economic, political, diplomatic, and military retreat".

The paper set out a plan by which Israel would "shape its strategic environment", beginning with the removal of Saddam Hussein and the installation of a Hashemite monarchy in Baghdad.
...
At first glance, there's not much to distinguish the 1996 "Clean Break" paper from the outpourings of other right-wing and ultra-Zionist thinktanks ... except for the names of its authors.

The leader of the "prominent opinion makers" who wrote it was Richard Perle - now chairman of the Defence Policy Board at the Pentagon.

Also among the eight-person team was Douglas Feith, a neo-conservative lawyer, who now holds one of the top four posts at the Pentagon as under-secretary of policy.

Neoconservative agenda is the dominant ideology driving the policies of the Bush administration

Neo-Conservatism: "Neo-Conservatism Last modified: Thu Apr 10 00:58:29 CDT 2003

The neoconservative agenda is the dominant ideology driving the policies of the Bush administration.

Perhaps the most succinct expression of the neoconservative agenda is laid out by the right-wing think-tank Project for a New American Century. In this worldview, the entire future of America and the Earth revolve around multiple wars fought to defend a perpetually expanding US 'security perimiter' around the world as the US armed forces continue their mission as the 'cavalry on the new American frontier.' Many of the key personalities are what Noam Chomsky calls 'recycled Reaganites.' The neo-conservatives basically come right out and say that their goal is world domination. The 'pre-emption doctrine', the desire for war, the multiple war-fighting scenarios outlined by Rumsfeld, and the push for Star Wars and the weaponization of space all come out of this shared ideology.

Project for a New American Century advances several ideas:

A future of perpetual war, where war is a permanent feature of the landscape.
A titanic US military. The existing budget of one half the federal budget -- more than the entire rest of the world combined -- is 'inadequate,' because if it were ever adequate, it would signal that there would be no more need to grow the defense industry. Therefore, the military budget will always be 'inadequate', and require the gutting of any programs that actually serve the public interest.
US military colonization of space with a 'US Space Forces,' in violation of the Outer Space Treaty.
The shaping of the entire world and outer space to suit 'American interests.'
Disdain of international treaties and any form of international cooperation that may involve restraints on American international conduct

Key Names
Richard Haas, Douglas Feith, Project for the New American Century (PNAC), Richard Perle, Elliott Abrams, Keith Payne, John Bolton,
Michael Ledeen, Donald Rumsfeld, Dick Cheney, The Heritage Foundation, James Woolsey, Paul Wolfowitz,

Neoconservatives: The Weird Men Behind George W. Bush's War

The Weird Men Behind George W. Bush's War: "By Michael Lind | New Statesman - London www.newstatesman.com | April 7, 2003

America's allies and enemies alike are baffled. What is going on in the United States? Who is making foreign policy? And what are they trying to achieve? ...
...
... The truth is more alarming. As a result of several bizarre and unforeseeable contingencies - such as the selection rather than election of George W Bush, and 11 September - the foreign policy of the world's only global power is being made by a small clique that is unrepresentative of either the US population or the mainstream foreign policy establishment.

The core group now in charge consists of neoconservative defence intellectuals (they are called "neoconservatives" because many of them started off as anti-Stalinist leftists or liberals before moving to the far right). Inside the government, the chief defence intellectuals include Paul Wolfowitz, the deputy secretary of defence. He is the defence mastermind of the Bush administration; Donald Rumsfeld is an elderly figurehead who holds the position of defence secretary only because Wolfowitz himself is too controversial. Others include Douglas Feith, the number three at the Pentagon; Lewis "Scooter" Libby, a Wolfowitz protege who is Cheney's chief of staff; John R Bolton, a right-winger assigned to the State Department to keep Colin Powell in check; and Elliott Abrams, recently appointed to head Middle East policy at the National Security Council. On the outside are James Woolsey, the former CIA director, who has tried repeatedly to link both 9/11 and the anthrax letters in the US to Saddam Hussein, and Richard Perle, who has just resigned from his unpaid defence department advisory post after a lobbying scandal. Most of these "experts" never served in the military. But their headquarters is now the civilian defence secretary's office, where these Republican political appointees are despised and distrusted by the largely Republican career soldiers.
...
The neo-con defence intellectuals, as well as being in or around the actual Pentagon, are at the centre of a metaphorical "pentagon" of the Israel lobby and the religious right, plus conservative think-tanks, foundations and media empires. Think-tanks such as the American Enterprise Institute (AEI) and the Centre for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) provide homes for neo-con "in-and-outers" when they are out of government (Perle is a fellow at AEI). The money comes not so much from corporations as from decades-old conservative foundations, such as the Bradley and Olin foundations, which spend down the estates of long-dead tycoons. Neoconservative foreign policy does not reflect business interests in any direct way. The neo- cons are ideologues, not opportunists.

The major link between the conservative think-tanks and the Israel lobby is the Washington-based and Likud- supporting Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs (Jinsa), which co-opts many non-Jewish defence experts by sending them on trips to Israel. It flew out the retired General Jay Garner, now slated by Bush to be proconsul of occupied Iraq. In October 2000, he co- signed a Jinsa letter that began: "We . . . believe that during the current upheavals in Israel, the Israel Defence Forces have exercised remarkable restraint in the face of lethal violence orchestrated by the leadership of [the] Palestinian Authority."

The Israel lobby itself is divided into Jewish and Christian wings. Wolfowitz and Feith have close ties to the Jewish-American Israel lobby. Wolfowitz, who has relatives in Israel, has served as the Bush administration's liaison to the American Israel Public Affairs Committee. Feith was given an award by the Zionist Organisation of America, citing him as a "pro- Israel activist". While out of power in the Clinton years, Feith collaborating with Perle, co-authored for Likud a policy paper that advised the Israeli government to end the Oslo peace process, reoccupy the territories and crush Yasser Arafat's government.

Such experts are not typical of Jewish-Americans, who mostly voted for Gore in 2000. The most fervent supporters of Likud in the Republican electorate are southern Protestant fundamentalists. The religious right believes that God gave all of Palestine to the Jews, and fundamentalist congregations spend millions to subsidise Jewish settlements in the occupied territories.

The final corner of the neoconservative pentagon is occupied by several right-wing media empires, with roots - odd as it seems - in the Commonwealth and South Korea. Rupert Murdoch disseminates propaganda through his Fox Television network. His magazine the Weekly Standard, edited by William Kristol, the former chief of staff of Dan Quayle (vice-president, 1989-93), acts as a mouthpiece for defence intellectuals such as Perle, Wolfowitz, Feith and Woolsey as well as for Sharon's government. The National Interest (of which I was executive editor, 1991-94) is now funded by Conrad Black, who owns the Jerusalem Post and the Hollinger empire in Britain and Canada.

Strangest of all is the media network centred on the Washington Times - owned by the South Korean messiah (and ex-convict) the Reverend Sun Myung Moon - which owns the newswire UPI. UPI is now run by John O'Sullivan, the ghost-writer for Margaret Thatcher who once worked as an editor for Conrad Black in Canada. Through such channels, the "Gotcha!" style of right- wing British journalism, as well as its Europhobic substance, have contaminated the US conservative movement.

The corners of the neoconservative pentagon were linked together in the 1990s by the Project for the New American Century (PNAC), run by Kristol out of the Weekly Standard offices. Using a PR technique pioneered by their Trotskyist predecessors, the neo-cons published a series of public letters, whose signatories often included Wolfowitz and other future members of the Bush foreign policy team. They called for the US to invade and occupy Iraq and to support Israel's campaigns against the Palestinians (dire warnings about China were another favourite). During Clinton's two terms, these fulminations were ignored by the foreign policy establishment and the mainstream media. Now they are frantically being studied.

How did the neo-con defence intellectuals - a small group at odds with most of the US foreign policy elite, Republican as well as Democratic - manage to capture the Bush administration? Few supported Bush during the presidential primaries. They feared that the second Bush would be like the first - a wimp who had failed to occupy Baghdad in the first Gulf war and who had pressured Israel into the Oslo peace process - and that his administration, again like his father's, would be dominated by moderate Republican realists such as Powell, James Baker and Brent Scowcroft. They supported the maverick senator John McCain until it became clear that Bush would get the nomination.

Then they had a stroke of luck - Cheney was put in charge of the presidential transition (the period between the election in November and the accession to office in January). Cheney used this opportunity to stack the administration with his hardline allies. Instead of becoming the de facto president in foreign policy, as many had expected, Secretary of State Powell found himself boxed in by Cheney's right-wing network, including Wolfowitz, Perle, Feith, Bolton and Libby.

The neo-cons took advantage of Bush's ignorance and inexperience. Unlike his father, a Second World War veteran who had been ambassador to China, director of the CIA and vice-president, George W was a thinly educated playboy who had failed repeatedly in business before becoming the governor of Texas, a largely ceremonial position (the state's lieutenant governor has more power). His father is essentially a north- eastern, moderate Republican; George W, raised in west Texas, absorbed the Texan cultural combination of machismo, anti-intellectualism and overt religiosity. The son of upper-class Episcopalian parents, he converted to southern fundamentalism in a midlife crisis. Fervent Christian Zionism, along with an admiration for macho Israeli soldiers that sometimes coexists with hostility to liberal Jewish-American intellectuals, is a feature of the southern culture.

The younger Bush was tilting away from Powell and toward Wolfowitz ("Wolfie", as he calls him) even before 9/11 gave him something he had lacked: a mission in life other than following in his dad's footsteps. There are signs of estrangement between the cautious father and the crusading son: last year, veterans of the first Bush administration, including Baker, Scowcroft and Lawrence Eagleburger, warned publicly against an invasion of Iraq without authorisation from Congress and the UN.

It is not clear that George W fully understands the grand strategy that Wolfowitz and other aides are unfolding. He seems genuinely to believe that there was an imminent threat to the US from Saddam Hussein's "weapons of mass destruction", something the leading neo-cons say in public but are far too intelligent to believe themselves. The Project for the New American Century urged an invasion of Iraq throughout the Clinton years, for reasons that had nothing to do with possible links between Saddam and Osama Bin Laden. Public letters signed by Wolfowitz and others called on the US to invade and occupy Iraq, to bomb Hezbollah bases in Lebanon and to threaten states such as Syria and Iran with US attacks if they continued to sponsor terrorism. Claims that the purpose is not to protect the American people but to make the Middle East safe for Israel are dismissed by the neo-cons as vicious anti-Semitism. Yet Syria, Iran and Iraq are bitter enemies, with their weapons pointed at each other, and the terrorists they sponsor target Israel rather than the US. The neo-cons urge war with Iran next, though by any rational measurement North Korea's new nuclear arsenal is, for the US, a far greater problem.

So that is the bizarre story of how neoconservatives took over Washington and steered the US into a Middle Eastern war unrelated to any plausible threat to the US and opposed by the public of every country in the world except Israel. The frightening thing is the role of happenstance and personality. After the al-Qaeda attacks, any US president would likely have gone to war to topple Bin Laden's Taliban protectors in Afghanistan. But everything that the US has done since then would have been different had America's 18th- century electoral rules not given Bush the presidency and had Cheney not used the transition period to turn the foreign policy executive into a PNAC reunion.

For a British equivalent, one would have to imagine a Tory government, with Downing Street and Whitehall controlled by followers of Reverend Ian Paisley, extreme Eurosceptics, empire loyalists and Blimpish military types - all determined, for a variety of strategic or religious reasons, to invade Egypt. Their aim would be to regain the Suez Canal as the first step in a campaign to restore the British empire. Yes, it really is that weird.

Michael Lind, the Whitehead Fellow at the New America Foundation in Washington, DC, is the author of Made in Texas: George W Bush and the Southern Takeover of American Politics.

A neo-conservative clique seeks to ensnare our country in a series of wars that are not in Americas interest. by Patrick J. Buchanan

Real History, Israel, dual loyalties, and war: "Whose War? A neo-conservative clique seeks to ensnare our country in a series of wars that are not in Americas interest. by Patrick J. Buchanan | The American Conservative New York, March 24, 2003

The War Party may have gotten its war. But it has also gotten something it did not bargain for. Its membership lists and associations have been exposed and its motives challenged.

IN a rare moment in U.S. journalism, Tim Russert put this question directly to Richard Perle: Can you assure American viewers ... that were in this situation against Saddam Hussein and his removal for American security interests? And what would be the link in terms of Israel?

Suddenly, the Israeli connection is on the table, and the War Party is not amused. Finding themselves in an unanticipated firefight, our neo-conservative friends are doing what comes naturally, seeking student deferments from political combat by claiming the status of a persecuted minority group."

What happened to Richard Perle's big, bad, libel stick?

Richard Perle Libel Watch, Week 9 - What happened to Richard Perle's big, bad, libel stick? By Jack�Shafer: By Jack Shafer | Posted Wednesday, May 7, 2003, at 3:26 PM PT

Where, oh, where has Richard Perle put his big, bad, libel stick? In the middle of March, Perle informed the New York Sun of his intention to sue Seymour Hersh for libel over Hersh's March 17 New Yorker feature, which explored the conflicts of interest posed by Perle's business dealings and his chairmanship of the Pentagon's Defense Policy Board.

[The latest individual to cross Khashoggi's [Saudi arms dealer] path is America's leading Iraq hawk, Richard Perle. In the March 17 issue of The New Yorker, Seymour Hersh suggests that Perle is cashing in on his position as chairman of the Defense Policy Board, an influential group of nongovernment advisers to the Pentagon. Slate March 12, 2003]

Now, as we reach Week 9 of the Richard Perle Libel Watch, it's more evident than ever that Perle was just trash-talking. To begin with, the Hersh piece contained no libel. Yes, the scrutiny may have bruised Perle's ego. But hurting somebody's feelings isn't against the law, even in Britain, where Perle said he would file his suit, on account of its liberal libel laws. Why did Perle lodge the threat in the first place? Perhaps he surmised that by intimidating Hersh he could impede the rest of the journalist pack from inspecting his oscillations from business to government to business again.

If so, Perle was wrong. Crazy wrong. Call it a coincidence, but after he issued his libel threat the press mobbed him. The New York Times came first with a similar conflict-of-interest investigation, asking Nosy Parker questions about Perle's advisory work for the bankrupt telecom company Global Crossing...
...
He has no case. He can't take the heat. It's time for him to get out of the DPB kitchen.
[Perle was subsequently forced to resign. ed]