Wolfowitz Admits Iraq War Planned Two Days After 9-11
(Page 2 of 3)
August 2003
By Jason Leopold, Scoop.co.nz
Wolfowitz said it was clear that because Saddam Hussein "praised" the terrorist attacks on 9-11 that besides Afghanistan, Iraq went to the top of the list of countries against which the United States expected to launch an attack in the near future.
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"To the extent it was a debate about tactics and timing, the president clearly came down on the side of Afghanistan first. To the extent it was a debate about strategy and what the larger goal was, it is at least clear with 20/20 hindsight that the president came down on the side of the larger goal," Wolfowitz said.
In an interview with WABC-TV last week, Rumsfeld took it a step further, saying United States policy advocated regime change in Iraq since the 1990s and that was also a reason behind the war in Iraq.
"If you go back and look at the debate in the Congress and the debate in the United Nations, what we said was the president said that this is a dangerous regime, the policy of the United States government has been regime change since the mid to late 1990s . . . and that regime has now been changed. That is a very good thing," Rumsfeld said during the interview, a transcript of which can be found in Scoop's World News wire.
Rumfeld's response is only partly true. He and Wolfowitz, along with Vice President Dick Cheney and others in the administration, wrote to President Clinton in 1998 urging regime change in Iraq, but Clinton rebuffed them, saying his administration was focusing on dismantling al-Qaeda cells.
In the bigger picture, Iraqis are better off without Saddam Hussein, who ruled the country with an iron fist, torturing and murdering any citizen who spoke against his regime. But that's beside the point. The Bush administration lied to the world and launched an unjustifiable war.
And it's just the beginning of a so-called two-front war the U.S. is planning against other "outlaw" regimes. The administration is ratcheting up the rhetoric on Iran by making similar allegations that this country too poses a threat to national security by harboring al-Qaeda terrorists and building a nuclear arms arsenal.