- see bloew:-
http://www.philly.com/mld/dailynews/2003/01/27/news/local/5025024.htm
Invading Iraq not a new idea for Bush clique 4 years before 9/11, plan was set
...But in reality, Rumsfeld, Vice President Dick Cheney, and a small band of conservative ideologues had begun making the case for an American invasion of Iraq as early as 1997 - nearly four years before the Sept. 11 attacks and three years before President Bush took office. An obscure, ominous-sounding right-wing policy group called Project for the New American Century, or PNAC - affiliated with Cheney, Rumsfeld, Rumsfeld's top deputy Paul Wolfowitz and Bush's brother Jeb - even urged then-President Clinton to invade Iraq back in January 1998.
>From: Jon Johanning <jjohanning at igc.org>
>Reply-To: lbo-talk at lbo-talk.org
>To: lbo-talk at lbo-talk.org
>Subject: Re: [lbo-talk] Let Ralph Debate in 2004
>Date: Fri, 14 Nov 2003 21:00:27 -0500
>
>On Friday, November 14, 2003, at 01:32 AM, Joseph Wanzala wrote:
>
>>You are either being deliberately disingenous or you have not been
>>following this thread. Further you have for some inexpolicable reason
>>extracted one sentence out of a long paragraph and falsely presented it as
>>my entire 'argument'. I'm sorry but you are being exeedingly foolish. This
>>statement was part of a counterpoint to a specfic exchange, not a
>>spontaneous one sentence 'argument to the list and I in fact reached a
>>clear understanding with my interlocutor so please take your foolishness
>>elsewhere.
>
>Thanks for your very temperate reply. By "this argument," I didn't mean
>just that sentence, but the whole argument of the thread (which, BTW, I
>have been trying to follow as best I can, through all its twists and
>turns). I guess I am on the side of those who want to argue that the Bush
>people, including Wolfowitz, etc., are considerably crazier than anyone who
>worked for Clinton. But the Clinton people were of course also part of the
>"executive committee of the ruling class" -- just somewhat saner.
>
>In your previous post, you wrote:
>
>>I am saying that because of the way in which strategic military planning
>>works, the two policies are part of a piece. By the time the US under Bush
>>launched an operatrion like the invasion of Iraq in 2003 (which is more
>>about consolidating US military presence in that region - to police the
>>worlds oil reserves - and may well see an extension of military operations
>>into Syria and/or Saudi Arabia), such an operation had to have been in the
>>works for at least five years, indeed this has revealed to be the case.
>>The policy under Clinton paved the way for the military operations
>>principally through softening-up Iraq by the enforcement of sanctions. I
>>believe that they did not invade in 1990 because military they could not.
>>By 2003 the country had been crippled to such a level to make invasion
>>feasible. Let us not forget Madeline Albright's remarks about how the
>>lives of 500,000 children, victims of the sanctions, were 'worth the
>>trouble' (paraphrasing).
>>
>
>Where was it revealed that the Bush invasion was "in the works for at least
>five years"?
>
>Was Albright speaking for the whole Clinton administration when she make
>that remark?
>
>All this said, I think the whole story about the sanctions, and indeed the
>whole formation of U.S. Iraq policy in the Bush 41 and Clinton
>administrations, has yet to be told.
>
>
>Jon Johanning // jjohanning at igc.org
>__________________________________
>A sympathetic Scot summed it all up very neatly in the remark, 'You should
>make a point of trying every experience once, excepting incest and
>folk-dancing.' -- Sir Arnold Bax
>
>___________________________________
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