Pentagon Targeted Iran for Regime Change after 9/11

[laststeamtrain]

Pentagon Targeted Iran for Regime Change after 9/11

Gareth Porter*

WASHINGTON, May 5 (IPS) - Three weeks after the 9/11 terror attacks, former U.S. Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld established an official military objective of not only removing the Saddam Hussein regime by force but overturning the regime in Iran, as well as in Syria and four other countries in the Middle East, according to a document quoted extensively in then Undersecretary of Defence for Policy Douglas Feith's recently published account of the Iraq war decisions.

Feith's account further indicates that this aggressive aim of remaking the map of the Middle East by military force and the threat of force was supported explicitly by the country's top military leaders.

Feith's book, "War and Decision", released last month, provides excerpts of the paper Rumsfeld sent to President George W. Bush on Sep. 30, 2001 calling for the administration to focus not on taking down Osama bin Laden's al Qaeda network but on the aim of establishing "new regimes" in a series of states by "aiding local peoples to rid themselves of terrorists and to free themselves of regimes that support terrorism."

In quoting from that document, Feith deletes the names of all of the states to be targeted except Afghanistan, inserting the phrase "some other states" in brackets. In a facsimile of a page from a related Pentagon "campaign plan" document, the Taliban and Saddam Hussein regimes are listed as "state regimes" against which "plans and operations" might be mounted, but the names of four other states are blacked out "for security reasons".

Gen. Wesley Clark, who commanded the NATO bombing campaign in the Kosovo War, recalls in his 2003 book "Winning Modern Wars" being told by a friend in the Pentagon in November 2001 that the list of states that Rumsfeld and Deputy Secretary of Defence Paul Wolfowitz wanted to take down included Iraq, Iran, Syria, Libya, Sudan and Somalia.

Clark writes that the list also included Lebanon. Feith reveals that Rumsfeld's paper called for getting "Syria out of Lebanon" as a major goal of U.S. policy.

<more>

http://www.ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=42241

[gateley]

1. Jesus -- who DIDN'T they target?

9/11 gave them a blank check.

[Tangerine LaBamba]

2. So did Congress

Thanks, folks.

[gateley]

3. You're so right. nt

[sinkingfeeling]

4. Guess Rummy just copied from the Project for the New American Century.

[acmavm]

5. Look at how all their plans turned out. What assholes.

[Doctor_J]

6. So I guess the Iraqi freedom fighters kept us from becoming Germany in 1940

If only Poland had managed to beat back Hitler the way Iraq has stifled the neocons, think of the destruction that would have been spared. :-(

[Kaleko]

7. Good point.

A lot of things went wrong with their master plan. Including the flight that was supposed to hit the Capitol or White House to cripple Congress and/or the executive branch on 9/11 and give Cheney absolute power.