Hardliner's Hardliner Led Bush's Iraq Review (JIM LOBE)

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Hardliner's Hardliner Led Bush's Iraq Review
Jim Lobe

WASHINGTON, Jan 9 (IPS) - When President George W. Bush's unveils his long-awaited new strategy on Iraq Wednesday night, he will be relying heavily on the counsel of one J.D. Crouch II, perhaps the most hard line -- if most obscure -- of his hawkish advisers.

Over the past 15 years, the generally low-profile Crouch has taken any number of controversial positions, from advocating military action against Cuba and North Korea to blaming the 1999 Columbine High School student massacre in Colorado on "30 years of liberal social policy".

As deputy national security adviser, Crouch, who has held three posts in the Bush administration, chaired the inter-agency group charged with mapping out Bush's new Iraq strategy, whose main feature, it is expected, will add some 20,000 new U.S. troops to the 140,000 already there in hopes of stabilising Baghdad and rebellious al Anbar province.

Crouch, whose substantive expertise is in arms control -- or, more precisely, how the U.S. can evade or undermine international efforts to promote arms control -- has long been a favourite of Vice President Dick Cheney, whose own national security adviser, neo-conservative John Hannah, has reportedly played a key role in the deliberations over Iraq.

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He also joined the board of advisers of the ultra-hawkish Centre for Security Policy (CSP), a lobby group funded by defence contractors and far-right Zionists associated with Israel's Likud Party and headed by hard-line neo-conservative, Frank Gaffney.

Other members of that board have included senior members of the Bush administration, including Elliot Abrams, the senior Middle East director on the National Security Council; former Defence Policy Board Chairman Richard Perle; former Undersecretary of Defence for Policy Douglas Feith; and a number of former and current SMSU faculty members, including Van Cleave, Charles Kupperman, Keith Payne, and the former head of Reagan's Star Wars programme, Henry Cooper.

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