Reply #75: LIHOP - PNAC on Nightline

[RamboLiberal]

JACKIE JUDD

(Voice Over) The letter to Mr. Clinton, was in essence, a preview of arguments that would have a more receptive audience five years later. The Clinton White House did bomb Baghdad in 1998, after America's containment policy of Saddam laid dormant, until a Tuesday morning in September. A 76-page white paper, circulating for a year and arguing for an aggressive US foreign policy, suddenly gained new relevance.

JACKIE JUDD (CONTINUED)

(Off Camera) In the blueprint, it says, the process of transformation is likely to be a long one. Absent some catastrophic and catalyzing event, like a new Pearl Harbor. Was 9/11, your Pearl Harbor?

GARY SCHMITT

I think it was the country's Pearl Harbor. I think it was the President's Pearl Harbor.

JACKIE JUDD

(Voice Over) The Project, agitating outside and now inside the Administration, seized an opportunity after 9/11, which made war inevitable, argues Professor Ian Lustick of the University of Pennsylvania.

PROFESSOR IAN LUSTICK

Before 9/11, this group was in the position it is in but could not win over the President to this extravagant image of what foreign policy required. After 9/11, it was able to benefit from the gigantic eruption of political capital, combined with the supply of military preponderance in the hands of the President. And this small group, therefore, was able to gain direct contact and even control, now, of the White House.

JACKIE JUDD

(Voice Over) According to the book "Bush At War," by Bob Woodward, it was only 30 hours after the 9/11 attacks, that Rumsfeld asked the President, why shouldn't the US go against Iraq, not just al-Qaeda? At the Pentagon on September 13th, Wolfowitz, for the first time, alluded to that broader goal.

Will the MSM question this - hell no. After all we got Prince Charles marrying Camilla and Michael Jackson. That Bush, Cheney and the PNAC cabal MIHOP, LIHOP or just out and out were grossly incompetent is of no importance.