Iraq: Schemers have their way ... (Asia Times : PNAC and the WH)

[Trajan]

http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/EG17Ak02.html

Iraq: Schemers have their way

By Jim Lobe - July 17, 2003

WASHINGTON - With demands for a full-scale investigation of the manipulation of intelligence by the administration of President George W Bush mounting steadily, it appears increasingly clear that key officials and their allies outside the administration decided to use the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, as a pretext for going to war against Iraq within hours of the attacks themselves.

Within the administration, the principals appear to have included Pentagon chief Donald Rumsfeld, Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz, Vice President Dick Cheney and his national-security advisor, I Lewis Libby, among others in key posts in the National Security Council and the State Department.

Outside the administration, key figures included close friends of both Wolfowitz and Rumsfeld, including Richard Perle and former Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) chief James Woolsey - both members of Rumsfeld's Defense Policy Board (DPB); Frank Gaffney, head of the arms industry-funded Center for Security Policy; and William Kristol, editor of the Rupert Murdoch-owned Weekly Standard and chairman of the Project for the New American Century (PNAC), among others.

-snip-

A hint of a deliberate campaign to connect Iraq with the September 11 attacks and al-Qaeda surfaced last month in a televised interview of General Wesley Clark on the popular public-affairs program Meet the Press. In answer to a question, Clark asserted, "There was a concerted effort during the fall of 2001, starting immediately after September 11, to pin September 11 and the terrorism problem on Saddam Hussein.

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