Mainstream Thoughts about PNAC and the "9/11-Iraq connection"

posted by ewing2001 on Wednesday October 08, @04:45AM

Iraq/ It was never about Sept. 11

Two years ago today, the first American bombs fell on Afghanistan. It was the opening of the military segment in the war on terrorism, coming just a few days short of one month after the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.

America and the world had waited expectantly for this shoe to drop; it was well accepted that the attacks were the work of Osama bin Laden and his followers -- and that they were being shielded by the Taliban regime in Afghanistan.

The world was with the United States two years ago; indeed, it was eager to help. Since then, that unity has crumbled to dust, not least because of the go-it-alone arrogance the Bush administration demonstrated from the outset. But by far the largest fracture occurred because of the administration's efforts to portray the preemptive attack it wanted to mount against Iraq as part of the post-Sept. 11 war on terror.

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Links were alleged and insinuated between Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein and Bin Laden, to the point that most Americans came to believe Iraq was behind the attacks.

That wasn't true, but making that connection served larger goals of the Bush administration -- goals that predated Sept. 11 by at least four years. Chief among them was removing Saddam Hussein from power by means of military action. Sept. 11 provided a convenient rationale.

Chief proponent of this strategy was a group called the Project for the New American Century. PNAC is headed by William Kristol, editor of a neoconservative magazine, the Weekly Standard. Prominent associates of PNAC in the late 1990s included: Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld and his deputy Paul Wolfowitz; Under-Secretary of State for nonproliferation John Bolton; U.S. Trade Representative Robert Zoellick; former chairman and current member of the Pentagon's Defense Policy Board Richard Perle, plus several other DFDP members; current National Security Council staffer and alum of Iran-Contra Elliott Abrams, and Vice President Dick Cheney.

During the last years of the Clinton administration, PNAC associates were scathing in their review of U.S. policies toward Iraq: Attempts to contain Saddam had failed. Iraq was within as little as three months of being a biological weapons threat to its neighbors and Israel. Only military action against Saddam would be effective. A sampling: