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Since all of President Bush’s reasons for invading Iraq turned out to
be false, the question lingers: Why, really, did he start the war?
A study by the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace indicates
that an Iraq attack had been advocated for more than a decade by a clique
of far-right Republican “hawks” who wanted to control Iraq’s oil and erase
threats to Israel. A brief by foundation officer Joseph Cirincione
begins:
“Long before Sept. 11, before the first inspections in Iraq had
started, a small group of influential officials and experts in Washington
were calling for regime change in Iraq. Some never wanted to end the 1991
war. Many are now administration officials.”
Paul Wolfowitz, undersecretary of defense in the first Bush
administration, was upset because the first President Bush didn’t finish
conquering Iraq in the Gulf War. Wolfowitz wrote a Defense Policy Guidance
plan advocating another attack on Iraq to assure “access to vital raw
material, primarily Persian Gulf oil,” and to reduce deadly weapons and
Mideast terrorism that menaced Israel.
His plan called for preemptive strikes by America. When it leaked to
The New York Times, a public outcry caused it to be withdrawn — until it
was resurrected under the second President Bush as his preemptive war
strategy. The Carnegie report continues:
“In 1996, Richard Perle, Douglas Feith and David Wurmser, now
administration officials, joined in a report to the newly elected Likud
government in Israel calling for ‘a clean break’ with the policies of
negotiating with the Palestinians and trading land for peace. They said
‘Israel can shape its strategic environment ... by weakening, containing
and even rolling back Syria. This effort can focus on removing Saddam
Hussein from power in Iraq.’... They called for ‘reestablishing the
principle of preemption.’”
In 1998, a group of 18 conservatives — including Wolfowitz, Perle,
Donald Rumsfeld and convicted Iran-contra conspirator Eliott Abrams —
wrote to President Clinton urging him to “aim at the removal of Saddam
Hussein’s regime from power.”
In 2000, while Clinton was still president, “neoconservative” hawks in
the Project for the New American Century drafted a plan to use America’s
military might to impose U.S. interests around the globe. It advocated
keeping “a substantial American force presence” in the Persian Gulf sector
dominated by Iraq. PNAC leaders included Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, Perle, Dick
Cheney, Jeb Bush and William Kristol, who got $100,000 from the sleazy
Enron conglomerate that backed Bush for president.
When the 9/11 horror happened, it provided an opportunity for this
“neocon” group — by then in power in the new Bush administration — to
unleash war on Iraq. On the very day of the 9/11 tragedy, Defense
Secretary Rumsfeld wrote a memo urging aides to tie Saddam Hussein to the
al-Qaida terrorist network. “Go massive. Sweep it all up. Things related
and not,” his note said.
For several months, the urgency of wiping out the al-Qaida base of
operations in Afghanistan took top priority — but planning for an Iraq
attack proceeded. Perle, who had become chairman of a Pentagon war policy
board, met in Paris with a notorious arms dealer to discuss action against
Iraq. He also participated in a Goldman Sachs conference call advising
investors how to reap war profits. The session was titled “Implications of
an Imminent War: Iraq Now, North Korea Next?”
Washington Post columnist David Ignatius says Pentagon leader Wolfowitz
is a genuine idealist, despite “the widespread notion that Wolfowitz is
simply a neoconservative tool of Israel.” It’s easy to see why that notion
became widespread. He is tightly allied with Perle, Feith and other Bush
insiders involved in the Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs,
which is devoted to protecting Israel and neutralizing its Arab neighbors.
The group wields enormous clout in the Bush administration.
President Bush took up the war cry against Iraq. He refused to let U.N.
inspectors continue searching the nation, and demanded immediate war. Now
America is paying a bitter price for it. West Virginia’s Sen. Robert C.
Byrd declared:
“We have been dragged into this war by a president surrounded by
super-hawks, who intended from the beginning to attack.”
That sounds like a precise summation. A tiny clique planned the Iraq
assault for a decade, and the 9/11 tragedy gave them a smokescreen to use
as an excuse to start the war. No other explanation adds
up. | 