Thanks Imm .... good info there.
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June 3, 1997 - Neo-Con Aims and Philosophy
American foreign and defense policy is adrift.
"We aim to change this. We aim to make the case and rally support for
American global leadership."
Our aim is to remind Americans of these lessons and to draw their
consequences for today. Here are four consequences:
. we need to increase defense spending significantly if we are to carry
out our global
responsibilities today and modernize our armed forces for the future;
. we need to strengthen our ties to democratic allies and to challenge
regimes hostile to our interests and values;
. we need to promote the cause of political and economic freedom abroad;
. we need to accept responsibility for America's unique role in preserving
and extending an international order friendly to our security, our
prosperity, and our principles.
Such a Reaganite policy of military strength and moral clarity may not be
fashionable today. But it is necessary if the United States is to build on
the successes of this past century and to ensure our security and our
greatness in the next.
http://www.newamericancentury.org/statementofprinciples.htm
Neo Cons / SUPPORTERS included:
William Kristol Elliott Abrams Jeb Bush Dick Cheney Steve Forbes
Aaron Friedberg Donald Kagan I. Lewis Libby Donald Rumsfeld
George Weigel Paul Wolfowitz Richard Armitage John Bolton
Richard Perle James Woolsey ISRAEL
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September 18, 1998
MEMORANDUM TO: OPINION LEADERS
FROM: GARY SCHMITT
SUBJECT: Wolfowitz Statement on U.S. Policy Toward Iraq
http://www.newamericancentury.org/iraqsep1898.htm
Saddam's main strength -- his ability to control his people though extreme
terror -- is also his greatest vulnerability. The overwhelming majority of
people, including some of his closest associates, would like to be free of
his grasp if only they could safely do so.
A strategy for supporting this enormous latent opposition to Saddam requires
political and economic as well as military components. It is eminently
possible for a country that possesses the overwhelming power that the United
States has in the Gulf. The heart of such action would be to create a
liberated zone in Southern Iraq comparable to what the United States and its
partners did so successfully in the North in 1991. Establishing a safe
protected zone in the South, where opposition to Saddam could rally and
organize, would make it possible:
. For a provisional government of free Iraq to organize, begin to gain
international recognition and begin to publicize a political program for the
future of Iraq;
. For that provisional government to control the largest oil field in Iraq
and make available to it, under some kind of appropriate international
supervision, enormous financial resources for political, humanitarian and
eventually military purposes;
. Provide a safe area to which Iraqi army units could rally in opposition
to Saddam, leading to the liberation of more and more of the country and the
unraveling of the regime.
This would be a formidable undertaking, and certainly not one which will
work if we insist on maintaining the unity of the UN Security Council. But
once it began it would begin to change the calculations of Saddam's
opponents and supporters -- both inside and outside the country -- in
decisive ways. One Arab official in the Gulf told me that the effect inside
Iraq of such a strategy would be "devastating" to Saddam. But the effect
outside would be powerful as well. Our friends in the Gulf, who fear Saddam
but who also fear ineffective American action against him, would see that
this is a very different U.S. policy. And Saddam's supporters in the
Security Council -- in particular France and Russia -- would suddenly see a
different prospect before them. Instead of lucrative oil production
contracts with the Saddam Hussein regime, they would now have to calculate
the economic and commercial opportunities that would come from ingratiating
themselves with the future government of Iraq.
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HOW TO ATTACK IRAQ
Weekly Standard Editorial, November 16, 1998
It now seems fairly certain that some time in the
next few weeks the Clinton administration will
have to strike Iraq. There really are no acceptable
alternatives. Saddam's recent demand for the expulsion
of the U. N. weapons inspectors and for the
removal of Richard Butler as head of the inspections
regime is mostly a ploy to buy time. Saddam would,
of course, like to force the United States and the U. N.
to agree to further dilution of the
already badly compromised inspection
effort.
The deal he wangled with U. N.
secretary general Kofi Annan last
February has so far worked out
wonderfully for him. The next deal
he wants would look something like
this: In return for backing down
from his latest challenge, Saddam is
rewarded with a U. N. Security
Council commitment to wrap up its
review of Iraq's compliance with
the inspections regime and to move
quickly to lift economic sanctions. France and Russia
would agree to such a deal in a heartbeat. But even if
the Clinton administration blocked it at the Security
Council, Saddam wouldn't mind. The longer the present
crisis lasts, the more weeks the United States
spends arguing with its allies and with Russia, the
closer Saddam comes to his real objective: finally
acquiring chemical and biological weapons of mass
destruction and the missiles to deliver them.
CIA director George Tenet said last January that
Iraq already had the "technological expertise" to produce
biological weapons "in a matter of weeks." And
according to former U. N. weapons inspector Scott
R i t t e r, Saddam needs only six months without
inspectors looking over his shoulder to build those
weapons and deploy them on missiles capable of
reaching Israel and other targets in the Middle East.
http://www.newamericancentury.org/AttackIraq-Nov16,98.pdf
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Exhaustive review finds no link between Saddam, al Qaida
The new study of the Iraqi regime's archives found no documents indicating a
"direct operational link" between Hussein's Iraq and al Qaida before the
invasion, according to a U.S. official familiar with the report.
He and others spoke to McClatchy on condition of anonymity because the study
isn't due to be shared with Congress and released before Wednesday.
President Bush and his aides used Saddam's alleged relationship with al
Qaida, along with Iraq's supposed weapons of mass destruction, as arguments
for invading Iraq after the September 11, 2001 , terrorist attacks.
Then-Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld claimed in September 2002 that the
United States had "bulletproof" evidence of cooperation between the radical
Islamist terror group and Saddam's secular dictatorship.
Then-Secretary of State Colin Powell cited multiple linkages between Saddam
and al Qaida in a watershed February 2003 speech to the United Nations
Security Council to build international support for the invasion. Almost
every one of the examples Powell cited turned out to be based on bogus or
misinterpreted intelligence.
As recently as last July, Bush tried to tie al Qaida to the ongoing violence
in Iraq . "The same people that attacked us on September the 11th is a crowd
that is now bombing people, killing innocent men, women and children, many
of whom are Muslims," he said.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/mcclatchy/20080310/wl_mcclatchy/2875005
--
"We look at everything in terms of American culture, and how Americans see
the world, not how other people and it's a failing which hurts us."
Former US Naval officer Dr Harlan Ullman 3/12/2008
**.... despite what President Bush says about us being a nation at war
against terror - we're not. **
