Reply #11: 2002-2003

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US Government Works on Plans for Post-War Iraq

The Bush administration develops plans for post-war Iraq. But the process is plagued with infighting between a small, highly secretive group of planners in the Pentagon and experts at the CIA and State Department who are involved with the “Future of Iraq Project”. The two opposing groups disagree on a wide range of topics, but it is the Pentagon group which exerts the strongest influence on the White House’s plans (see Fall 2002) for administering post-Saddam Iraq. One State Department official complains to The Washington Post in October 2002 “that the Pentagon is seeking to dominate every aspect of Iraq’s postwar reconstruction.”

The group of Pentagon planners includes several noted neoconservatives who work in, or in association with, the Pentagon’s Office of Special Plans (see September 2002) and the Near East/South Asia bureau. The planners have close ties to the American Enterprise Institute (AEI) and the Project for the New American Century (PNAC), two think tanks with a shared vision of reshaping the geopolitical landscape of the Middle East in favor of US and Israeli interests. The Pentagon planning group “had a visionary strategy that it hoped would transform Iraq into an ally of Israel, remove a potential threat to the Persian Gulf oil trade and encircle Iran with US friends and allies . . .

http://www.cooperativeresearch.org/context.jsp?item=complete_timeline_of_the_2003_invasion_of_iraq_353#complete_timeline_of_the_2003_invasion_of_iraq_353


Bill Kristol (a founder of PNAC and one of th main instigators of the Iraq invasion) looks a lot like the culprit in this new WH plan to attack Iran's Revolutionary Guard. He called for the strikes on the IRG earlier this month.

Terrorist Training Camps in Iran
Should they be safe havens?
by William Kristol
09/05/2007
http://www.weeklystandard.com/Content/Public/Articles/000/000/014/061vrvwi.asp


Kristol, in 2006, said Sy Hersh was "Scaring People Away From ‘Limited and Credible Military Option Against Iran"
http://thinkprogress.org/2006/04/10/kristol-hersh/