Informant38

Cheney's new adviser

David Wurmser has been quietly appointed as a Middle East adviser to Vice President Dick Cheney.
�
The move is significant, not only because Cheney is seen increasingly as the dominant foreign policy influence on President George W Bush, but also because it adds to the notion that neo-conservatives remain a formidable force under Bush, despite the sharp plunge in public confidence in Bush's handling of post-war Iraq resulting from the faulty assumptions propagated by the neo-cons before the war.
�
Wurmser's status as a favored protege of arch-hawk and former Defense Policy Board chairman Richard Perle at the American Enterprise Institute (AEI) also speaks loudly to Middle East specialists, who note Perle's long-time close association with Cheney, Pentagon chief Donald Rumsfeld and Rumsfeld's chief deputy Paul Wolfowitz.
�
Perle, who last week was in Israel to receive a special award from the Jerusalem Summit, an international group of right wing Jews and Christian Zionists who describe themselves as defenders of "civilization" against "Islamic fundamentalism", has made no secret of his own desire to confront Damascus
�
Wurmser, whose Israeli-born spouse Meyrav Wurmser heads Middle East studies at the neo-conservative Hudson Institute, was the main author of a 1996 report by a task force convened by the IASPS and headed by Perle, called the Study Group on a New Israeli Strategy Toward 2000.
�
Wurmser praised those who most influenced his work, a veritable "who's who" of those neo-cons most closely tied to Israel's far right, including Perle himself, another AEI(American Enterprise Institute) scholar, Michael Ledeen and undersecretary of defense for policy and the man in charge of post-Iraq war planning, Douglas Feith.
�
Wurmser also gave thanks to Irving Moskowitz, a major casino operator and long-time funder of Israel's settlement movement, whom he described as a "gentle man whose generous support of AEI allows me to be here".

�Jim Lobe/Asia Times 10.21.03