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Politics : DON'T START THE WAR -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: PartyTime who wrote (4375)	1/29/2003 6:15:19 PM
From: Crimson Ghost	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 25898

the neocons around Bush were urging Clinton to invade Iraq back in 1997. Iraq is an obsession with these fanatics. WILLIAM O. BEEMAN, PACIFIC NEWS SERVICE - In 1997, during the Clinton administration, a number of refugees from the administration of President George Bush Sr., including Dick Cheney and his chief of staff, I. Lewis Libby, got together to lobby then-Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich to invade Iraq. This group was still smarting from the "unfinished" first Gulf conflict. Calling themselves the "Project for the New American Century", the group drew up the plans for a second Iraq war. In a letter to President Clinton dated Jan. 26, 1998, the PNAC called for "the removal of Saddam Hussein's regime from power." In a letter dated May 29, 1998, to Gingrich and Sen. Trent Lott, they stated that Clinton had not listened to them and asserted: "We should establish and maintain a strong U.S. military presence in the region, and be prepared to use that force to protect our vital interests in the Gulf -- and, if necessary, to help remove Saddam from power." Chair of the PNAC was William Kristol, editor of the conservative Weekly Standard magazine. Signatories to the plan constitute a neo-conservative Who's Who. Aside from Kristol, they include Elliott Abrams, the convicted Iran-Contra conspirator whom Bush recently appointed director of Middle Eastern policy on the National Security Council; Paul Wolfowitz, deputy to Secretary Rumsfeld at the Pentagon; John Bolton, now undersecretary of state for arms control and international security; Richard Perle, chairman of the Defense Science Board; William J. Bennett, secretary of education under President Reagan; Richard Armitage, deputy to Colin Powell at the State Department; Zalmay Khalilzad, President Bush's ambassador to Afghanistan; and other members of the current administration. Their ideas are no secret. They were printed in a September 2000 PNAC report entitled "Rebuilding America's Defenses: Strategy, Forces, and Resources for a New Century," and in the book "Present Dangers: Crisis and Opportunity in American Foreign and Defense Policy," edited by Robert Kagan and William Kristol. These publications make it clear that the ultimate aim of the PNAC is permanent colonial occupation of Iraq and American domination of the region and its oil from that base of power.