Star Tribune: Iraq/ It was never about Sept. 11

[gristy]

The Minneapolis Star Tribune continues on its offensive. I never thought I would see the day where the "outing" of the BFEE would begin to sound repetitive.

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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. 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.

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