Shoot_The_Kids
03-29-2003, 05:08 PM
Old Road Map for Iraq War
President Bush repeatedly invoked September 11 as a justification for this war against Iraq, but plans for invading Iraq were circulating among rightwing bigwigs for years prior to September 11. The attacks on that awful day served as a mere pretext.
Way back in 1992, Paul Wolfowitz and Lewis Libby, aides to then-Defense Secretary Dick Cheney, came up with a Defense Planning Guideline that advocated a general policy of "preemptive military intervention."
Wolfowitz is now Donald Rumsfeld's Deputy Secretary of Defense. Libby is now Vice President Cheney's chief of staff.
Then in 1997 a bunch of hawks took roost in a think tank called "The Project for the New American Century." Their founding statement called for "a Reaganite policy of military strength and moral clarity" designed to "challenge regimes hostile to our interests and values."
That statement was signed, by among others, Wolfowitz and Libby, Rumsfeld and Cheney.
Three years later, the Project for a New American Century put out a report entitled "Rebuilding America's Defenses." That report identified Iraq, Iran, and North Korea as potential short-term targets, as Jay Bookman of the Atlanta Journal Constitution wrote, and it urged the Pentagon to study how "to remove these regimes from power."
It said the Pentagon should be "prepared to fight and decisively win multiple, simultaneous major theater wars." And it said the Pentagon should "perform the 'constabulary' duties associated with shaping the security environment in critical regions."
That report offered itself as a "road map."
Bush is just following along, and he is carrying out that constabulary duty, which in rhetoric and in substance is no different from that of the old British Empire.
President Bush repeatedly invoked September 11 as a justification for this war against Iraq, but plans for invading Iraq were circulating among rightwing bigwigs for years prior to September 11. The attacks on that awful day served as a mere pretext.
Way back in 1992, Paul Wolfowitz and Lewis Libby, aides to then-Defense Secretary Dick Cheney, came up with a Defense Planning Guideline that advocated a general policy of "preemptive military intervention."
Wolfowitz is now Donald Rumsfeld's Deputy Secretary of Defense. Libby is now Vice President Cheney's chief of staff.
Then in 1997 a bunch of hawks took roost in a think tank called "The Project for the New American Century." Their founding statement called for "a Reaganite policy of military strength and moral clarity" designed to "challenge regimes hostile to our interests and values."
That statement was signed, by among others, Wolfowitz and Libby, Rumsfeld and Cheney.
Three years later, the Project for a New American Century put out a report entitled "Rebuilding America's Defenses." That report identified Iraq, Iran, and North Korea as potential short-term targets, as Jay Bookman of the Atlanta Journal Constitution wrote, and it urged the Pentagon to study how "to remove these regimes from power."
It said the Pentagon should be "prepared to fight and decisively win multiple, simultaneous major theater wars." And it said the Pentagon should "perform the 'constabulary' duties associated with shaping the security environment in critical regions."
That report offered itself as a "road map."
Bush is just following along, and he is carrying out that constabulary duty, which in rhetoric and in substance is no different from that of the old British Empire.