> 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.
Yes, I knew about the PNAC thing already, but those folks were not in power then. What I was asking was whether the invasion was "in the works" *within the US Government* 5 years ago. That would be in the Clinton administration. Was *that* administration planning in 1997 the kind of invasion that occurred this spring? That would be interesting news, if true.
It would also go some ways toward supporting your thesis that there isn't a speck of difference between the foreign policies of Dem and GOP administrations.
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