With demands for a full-scale investigation of the manipulation of intelligence by the administration of President George W Bush mounting steadily, it appears increasingly clear that key officials and their allies outside the administration decided to use the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, as a pretext for going to war against Iraq within hours of the attacks themselves.
Within the administration, the principals appear to have included Pentagon chief Donald Rumsfeld, Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz, Vice President Dick Cheney and his national-security advisor, I Lewis Libby, among others in key posts in the National Security Council and the State Department.
Outside the administration, key figures included close friends of both Wolfowitz and Rumsfeld, including Richard Perle and former Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) chief James Woolsey - both members of Rumsfeld's Defense Policy Board (DPB); Frank Gaffney, head of the arms industry-funded Center for Security Policy; and William Kristol, editor of the Rupert Murdoch-owned Weekly Standard and chairman of the Project for the New American Century (PNAC), among others.
PNAC, which is based on the fifth floor of the American Enterprise Institute (AEI) building in downtown Washington, was founded in 1997 with the signing of a statement of principles calling for "a Reaganite policy of military strength and moral clarity", signed by 25 prominent neo-conservatives and right-wingers, including Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, Cheney and Libby as well as several others who are now senior Bush administration officials.
Jim Lobe Asia Times July 17 2003
